We All Play Our Part
by JannP
Summary: He was pretty sure he'd pictured every possible way and place they would be together.  Okay, and honestly, maybe even a few places they wouldn't be together.  Keeping it together was what mattered, right?  Sequel to Lest You Forget.  Rated M.
1. One: Just Here For the Ride

**A/N: **Well here it is. I can't even say it's long-awaited because I can't leave this story alone. It's already been influenced by a hybrid of songs and people. To all of you who have helped me and supported me, I say thank you. I hope you enjoy this ride. I have some plans. Also, if for some reason you haven't read **Lest You Forget** before this, I think you'll be okay, but if you have an extra year on your hands and nothing better to do, I recommend giving it a read through for maximum effect. Otherwise, this whole set of events is AU after the season 2 episode Original Song. Special thanks to **Jen **(**wants2beawriter**) for her betaing. TEN DAYS. And also, go read her stuff if you haven't because she's awesome. I'm just sayin'.

**Disclaimers: **I don't own Glee. I also don't own the song **I'll Be Your Breeze** by **Andrew Belle **(which is where I hijacked the title from) or the song **Uncertainly Certain** by **Green River Ordinance** (which is where I hijacked the chapter title from). Both these songs will figure into this story at some point, but if you're interested I suggest checking them out because they're just so great. Oh, also... I know nothing about the Tony's other than what Wikipedia and a few other media outlets have told me. So go easy on me, mmkay? If anyone is interested, here's Rachel's dress: www (dot) dressesforus (dot) com (backslash) princess-gold-one-shoulder-dress-with-layers (dot) html

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><p><strong>Chapter One: Just Here For the Ride<strong>

Finn had never really thought about it before. Sure, Rachel had been talking about the Tony's—specifically about winning them and what she would say when she did—for as long as he'd known her and obviously way before that. And he'd thought about _being_ there with her, naturally. He was pretty sure he'd pictured every possible way and place they would be together. Okay, and honestly, maybe even a few places they wouldn't be together.

Like that weird dream from last week about them having sex in a cave when the whole world was destroyed and they were the only two people left and they like, had to have a baby to save the species. (He'd spent a little too much time YouTubing old television shows and clips on his laptop while Rachel was at work. The dream hadn't exactly come from nowhere, okay?)

Anyway, so he hadn't thought about it until they were in a limousine and Cooper and Charlie were getting in with them, and then the door opened and they were walking on a really real red carpet. She was wearing these super-tall high heels that put her face at his shoulder and as she whispered to him to put his hands in his jacket pockets, she wrapped her arm around him and it was right 'cause it was her but wrong 'cause she was just taller than normal and that was weird. He'd never really thought about what they would look like or what it would feel like to walk down an actual red carpet.

He never thought about what it would feel like to have an actual award nominee on his arm, which meant he also hadn't considered the fact she'd be smiling at flashes and talking to the press for-fucking-ever. He'd kind of realized he'd be able to just watch her forever, though. She was so happy to talk about the role she was nominated for, and preview her upcoming play (she actually once _invited_ people to come to London to see it and he thought maybe she should try selling stuff if the Broadway thing didn't work out for her)…and _him_. Jesus, he'd never imagined _reporters_ would be interested in him.

Then he realized if the band took off, he would be more than just the arm candy in this scenario and he wondered if there was some way Rachel could teach him how to deal with the press idiots because she was a pro and he was _not_ good at talking to people the way she was. She worked in a by-line about his band, by the way, and he still wasn't sure how she'd managed to attach that to "…while we're on the subject."

They hadn't been on the subject. She had _brought it up_. She was amazing.

And now? Well, now she was gripping his hand tightly because the presenters had just taken the stage to announce Best Featured Actress in a Musical.

He brought her hand to his lips and kissed the back of it, looking at her out of the corner of his eye as he did. The motion seemed to snap her out of her intense trance and she actually breathed. She was just watching him out of the corner of her eye as well, but she smiled. He stuck his tongue out and licked the back of her hand and she yanked her hand out of his grasp, but she was laughing softly and saying how gross he was sometimes.

He was going to go ahead and put licking the back of her hand in the win column.

Finn had never really thought about how _he_ would end up on national television if _she_ won. But as soon as they said her name, he could feel all the eyes in the room shift over to them. He vaguely wondered _why_ she had insisted he take the aisle seat. Because it meant this was his third time out of his chair now; once when she had gone to prepare for her performance (her awesome performance, by the way, even if there were three other people on stage with her and she wasn't the lead), once when she had come back—and of course when she was getting up to accept her award.

He got up and stepped out to the side, then put his arm out toward her like _that_ would be the reason she walked. She looked up at him as she stepped past and he wasn't sure he'd ever seen that exact look in her eyes. He didn't want to be gross about it, he knew she didn't want him to be gross about it, so he just returned her smile and squeezed her hand hard. He was so proud of her; he knew she could feel it. She had worked hard for the moment. They could celebrate later and he could _not_ hear about how inappropriate public displays of affection were; he was reasonably sure once champagne was involved at the after-party they were going to, she'd change her mind.

Besides, they had a few different reasons to celebrate.

She lifted the skirt of her dress up (she looked amazing, by the way) as she climbed the stairs and he caught a glimpse of the spiky heels on her feet that he told her looked like they belonged in an Austin Powers movie and she'd given him some shut-up eyes when he said it. But honestly, they were like 6-inches tall and gold and glittery and…well, now he thought they looked like they just belonged on the ends of her legs and she kept telling him they were actually comfortable. He thought she might be lying.

She exchanged those stupid little French kisses on the cheek with the presenters and grasped her award tightly before she turned to the podium for her speech; he knew she'd been waiting for this moment for her entire life, even if it wasn't a win for Best Actress. Besides, she was working toward that and she deserved this recognition, too, and he knew she knew it. What he hadn't known until he saw her lean toward the microphone was that he'd been waiting a big portion of his life to _hear_ her give the speech. And he wondered almost absently if and where he would be mentioned. Honestly, he didn't think he _should_ be mentioned because he hadn't been around when she was doing the play—other than the one time he had gone to see it. But that didn't meant he didn't _want _to be mentioned or whatever.

"Well…I've always thought when this happened, I would have a huge list of people to thank and I'd get to the red light before I'd begun. But really, the list is pretty simple. I have to thank my husband, Finn, for his years of tireless support, regardless of where his own life was at. I knew he believed in me. He's probably my staunchest supporter, in addition to my fathers, Leroy and Hiram, as well as my sometimes-better but always fabulous other half, Kurt. I owe a lot to the full cast and crew of the show, obviously, who will hopefully get their own turns to shine tonight. To my equity rep, Elaine, for her dedication and constant advocacy on my behalf to get me amazing roles and opportunities in the first place. To those who decide who's nominated and who wins. To those have watched my shows, critiqued my performances in any way, and those who have approached me personally to offer insight—my most heartfelt thanks. And I hope to see you all again very soon."

She stepped off the stage during their applause (he may have wolf-whistled; he didn't get to use that skill often, especially outside of an elementary school gym class) and accepted the direction of people telling her where to go before something—he thought maybe it was a balled-up page from the program—hit him in the side of the head. He turned toward the seat behind him and to his right where it had come from, and saw Cooper looking almost mad. He scowled and heard Cooper hiss "What the fuck, dude?"

Charlie punched Cooper in the arm and he looked over at her only long enough to say 'ow' before he was leaning forward and trying to talk to Finn.

"What's your problem?"

"_Husband_?"

"Talk about it with Rachel later."

"I'm asking you _now_."

"Dude, we're whispering over like eight people. Shut up and look alive, I think your category is up." He turned in his seat and ignored the fact the show was paused for a commercial break, knowing Rachel would be back shortly and not wanting to be in the middle of that conversation when she arrived. But he wondered how they hadn't really thought about the fallout of eloping.

It was kind of going to be less than awesome. He was really, really glad he had left (she made him) his cell phone back at the hotel. Thankfully, so had she. Hers was because she claimed she didn't want to spend 'her' night responding to messages; his was because he wanted to pay attention to her. He hadn't really thought about all they'd be blocking out and leaving for tomorrow.

He had never been so glad it was today.

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><p>As soon as they had finished the walk back down the red carpet and he'd successfully helped her and her dress into the car, they sat waiting for Cooper and Charlie. The pair had been right behind them initially, but someone had stopped Cooper to talk about his new show and the rest, as they say, was history.<p>

Rachel looked at Finn with a brilliant (she was getting the hang of being British) smile even though she was beyond exhausted already. Between the performance, her win, the leading man's win, and then one nod for the director and one to the entire production, she had been on stage several times. Then, of course, was what had happened before they ever made it to Radio City Music Hall.

It was busy day—to put it mildly.

She leaned her head into him gratefully when he wrapped his arm around her shoulders. He played with the warm, bare skin on her shoulder and his free hand crossed his body to toy with the amber-hued jewels on her dress. The golden chiffon overlay had fallen awkwardly when she sat, leaving the bejeweled white satin skirt exposed.

"I really like your dress," he said. He leaned his head on top of hers. "You're amazing, you know that?"

"I think you're obligated to say such things about your _wife_," she said, still soaking in the praise from him anyway.

She couldn't see his grin come out, but it did. "Yeah, well…you're not amazing because you're my wife. You're my wife because you're amazing and I'd be an idiot not to marry you as fast I could."

"Mmm," she said contentedly as she snuggled against him.

Charlie and Cooper arrived, with Charlie getting in first because Cooper occasionally avoided acting like he'd been raised in a barn (which he hadn't.)

"Rachel, I had two reporters ask _me_ about _your_ dress. Pretty sure you're going to be on all the fashion blogs before bedtime."

Rachel, for her part, didn't even lift her head up from Finn's shoulder. "I doubt the theater world is that buzzworthy." She let out a huge yawn that surprised even Finn—maybe more than the way she dismissed what Charlie had said.

"Should we skip the party? Maybe I should take you home and put you to bed." He tightened his grip on her and turned his head to drop a kiss on her hair. She hadn't done anything too over-the-top for her hair style, just swept it up into a low bun with small braids woven in, so it still smelled normal to him. He closed his eyes and breathed her in.

Cooper, for his part just laughed—a lot. Charlie hit his shoulder again.

"What—ow! _Stop that_!" He protested.

"You stop that," Charlie barked. "Or you won't get taken home and put to bed."

"Well, I'm not legally obligated to get laid, I just _want _to."

His comment made Rachel sit up. "What are you talking about?"

"Well, if you're _married_, you have to have sex afterward for it to count."

Finn frowned. "That doesn't make sense," he argued. "She's wearing a ring. All the paperwork is signed. It counts."

Cooper held up a finger. "Not true, my friend. She could go to lawyer daddy number one tomorrow, say you hadn't fucked, and then she could erase your marriage."

Rachel shook her head before she settled back in to Finn.

"Wait…you guys are married? Like…_actually_?" Charlie asked. "When did that happen?"

Finn buried his nose in Rachel's hair again as she answered. "About three o'clock this afternoon."

"Are you…are you serious?" She stammered a little, leaning right into Cooper's lap to look at Rachel. "You…isn't it Sunday?"

"Lawyer daddy number one has an old and previously indebted law school friend who is a judge practicing here in the city. Since our flight leaves first thing tomorrow morning and we wanted to do this as close to home as possible, he set it up for us and it had to be this afternoon." She eyed Cooper a little contemptuously as she openly used his own words against him.

"So when you thanked your husband, it was legit; I thought you were just one of those couples that calls each other that," Charlie replied. "Would I be the first to say congratulations?"

Rachel shifted uncomfortably and Finn laughed a little. "Would you settle for third?" He asked. "There were a couple reporters who probably beat you to it when she changed her name…like…on the carpet."

"Ah, Rachel Berry...um…." Cooper scowled and scratched at the back of his head. "Well, this is awkward. What's your last name, Finn?"

The entire car laughed, but Cooper was correct. What do you say when you don't even know the last name of the guy your friend just married?

"_Our_ last name is Hudson," Rachel said. She was trying to be stern but she was too happy and too exhausted.

"Hudson," Cooper said easily. He sat back in his seat, his arm draped around the seat where Charlie sat. "So…what does that actually do to your stage name? I can't really say it ever occurred to me."

Rachel looked up at Finn and he looked down at her, but really all the angle meant was she saw the bottom of his chin and he saw her nose.

"Well… it's not like I have to show identification to have my name engraved on my award. And I told them to use Hudson, so…"

"You did?" Finn asked. He kissed her suddenly and insistently. She wrapped her fingers into the lapels on his jacket to give her a little more leverage as she turned into him.

She pulled away just enough he could answer. "Yeah, I think you're kind of stuck with me."

He nodded. "Well…that's good."

"So what does this do to your job?" Cooper asked the air. After their date at the bar, he was used to them just answering in the middle of their making out.

Finn gave a shrug and dragged his eyes away. "Nothin' really. I mean, I quit my job at Montrose and we're trying to get our band off the ground. We're doing a contest thing in Ohio but all we really have is a phone interview with a radio station next week…"

Rachel was watching him curiously but listening intently; it was safe to say in the last week since he'd shown up on her doorstep in London, they hadn't actually talked about…well…_much_. They'd made major progress on Tangled, but even that had been done in her—_their_—bed. Hearing about his actual plans was a needed conversation, as much as she didn't want reality to pierce the bubble they were living in (especially now.)

"So I guess it just means I'll spend more on airfare," Finn concluded.

"Oh, you're going to London?"

Rachel smiled. She and Finn opened their mouths at the same time, but she was the one who spoke first. "He already lives there with me."

Cooper shook his head and his eyes were wide. "You're setting an impossible standard for the rest of us, dude."

Rachel laughed and didn't even fight the urge to be that stupid, cheesy girl she sometimes wanted to actually kick in the shins. "Why do you think I wanted his last name?"

"Well, then let's get out the champagne and pre-game," Charlie said, reaching for the bar. "After all, we've got one Tony winner on board and _three_ parts of a Tony winning ensemble _in this very car_ plus a couple of sickening newlyweds. We have reasons, all right?"

She handed the bottle of champagne over to Cooper; he looked at her questioningly before he passed the bottle to Rachel; she was the pro at opening champagne without popping the cork and spraying champagne everywhere. It was one more thing Finn was kind of amused to learn about his new wife.

The other thing he learned was how much fun it actually was to go to that kind of party with her. She had worked the red carpet like a PR machine, and the after-party (which was only not lame because of the food. Like, seriously. The buffets? They were _themed_. It kind of blew his mind as he stood in the middle of the Cupcake _Pavilion_. He reached for his phone no less than six times, wanting to text a picture to various people. Then he realized it was going to be on E! or whatever and…the mind-blowing kept going on like that; it was a cycle) was no different. She smiled, she shook hands, and she kept him close. She always remembered to introduce him, never failed to remind people she had a new last name.

At some point, he stood with Charlie while Rachel and Cooper had their pictures taken together by some random reporter who had stopped by their table. Charlie had been in the ensemble of the play, and although she was cast as Rachel's understudy, she'd never actually played the part. And because Rachel had won, she and her co-supporting star were sort of in demand. It wasn't the first time Finn and Charlie had stood off to the side, watching Cooper and Rachel goof around.

Charlie lowered the glass of champagne that had been pressed to her lips and tilted it toward Rachel. "She's always…just…full of life. But I don't know if I've ever seen her this happy."

"She just won a Tony," he said. He smiled. "She's worked for it her whole life."

"Maybe, but I think it's just the icing. Not the cake," Charlie said. She linked her hand around Finn's arm where it was tucked into his jacket pocket. She was a little taller than Rachel (like basically everyone else) and kissed his cheek easily. "Hurt her and I'll kill you."

He looked over at the girl suddenly and he was pretty sure she wasn't kidding.

"You two are _beautiful," _squealed some random woman. She motioned to a photographer. "What are your names?"

"We're actually waiting for our dates," Charlie said smoothly. "But I'm Charlotte Black." She pointed to where Cooper and Rachel were still talking to the other reporter. "I'm here with Cooper Reynolds."

The reporter said something else but Finn had caught Rachel's eye and motioned her over with a twitch of his head, so he missed whatever it was. Turned out the reporter had already talked to Rachel and Cooper so she excused herself and Finn turned to Rachel and kissed her forehead before she looked back up at him.

"What was that?"

He shrugged it off. "I'm only _pretty sure_ there won't be a picture of Charlie kissing my cheek and threatening my life."

"So in other words…" Rachel said, redirecting her tired gaze to her unapologetic friend (who was giggling as Cooper said something in her ear). "It's basically just another night out for her."

"That's right!" Charlie said. "I told him I'd meet him in a dark alley if he ever hurts you."

Rachel just shook her head tiredly and motioned to their table a few feet away. "Can we sit down for a bit?"

"Goldmember shoes aren't so comfortable after all?" He said as he reached down to tug her chair out from the table.

She shook her head and dropped into the chair he held out. "They're fine," she said. He knew she'd never admit to him she was miserable. Her little sigh as she sat back did that for him.

"Wasn't there supposed to be dinner at this thing?" Cooper said as he settled into his own chair. It wasn't awkward at all that a waiter overheard him and then _rushed_ to bring food out for all four of them with an impatience that made the guys laugh. Rachel and Charlie excused themselves to go to the bathroom and returned with beer for the guys and champagne for themselves.

Finn knew she and Charlie had maybe had something else at the bar because she set their drinks down and then leaned over to talk in his ear (it_ was_ really loud, even if it was mostly just the low hum of voices talking everywhere around them), but she stumbled and rested her hand on his shoulder. He put his hands on her elbow and waist to steady her.

"People keep asking me why we're not having a private party," she said. His grin cracked open a little and she kept talking. "I don't know what to tell them. I think they're _right_."

He knew it made him a total dork, but he muttered a line he'd _always_ wanted to say to a girl. "Then let's get outta here."

Her hand slid up the side of his neck and she pulled back enough to cup his face in both her hands before she kissed him; turned out he was right about the combination of after-party and champagne changing her feelings on PDA. She dropped into his lap and pressed her tongue into his mouth. He kinda loved when she relaxed like that. He could get used to coming to stuff like this if it ended up with her in his lap.

He tried really hard to keep his hands from wandering too much, though. He didn't want to embarrass her, like, the next day. And there were at least a dozen photographers around _all the time_. He played with the jewels on her dress, inching up the one strap that looped over her shoulder, then trailing his fingers up her neck before he finally pulled away.

"Are you hungry at all? The server is tripping over himself to get us some food."

She shook her head and her lips were still actually on his as she spoke. "I'm not hungry. I'm something else."

"Yeah, you are," he agreed, grinning again. "I'm pretty sure our hotel has room service."

"I'm pretty sure I like the way you think," she said. "Let's go."

He pulled back and couldn't really hide his surprise, honestly. _Rachel Berry_ was ditching out on her first Tony Awards after-party—_after she won an award, no less_—to go back to their (admittedly pretty cool) hotel and fool around with him?

She wasn't Rachel Berry anymore. She was Rachel Berry _Hudson_. Things had changed. And he was pretty sure he was going to love being married to her.


	2. Two: Makes Me Tongue Tied

**A/N:** Special thanks to Laura (**tjcrowfoot**) for her help with the Kurt and Carole voicemails. Always a pleasure and it's been fun chatting with you again. SIX DAYS. Yay. Thanks to everyone for reading, reviewing, alerting, reblogging, and enjoying. I appreciate all the support. The chapter title/inspiration was taken from the song **Kiss Quick **by **Matt Nathanson_. _**

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><p><strong>Chapter Two: Makes Me Tongue Tied<strong>

Rachel had grown up practicing. She'd always felt like her childhood, her adolescence, and even her teens had just been rehearsal for her real life. In some ways, it felt like the practice had paid off over the weekend. She had won (a _Tony_! And she knew now the squealing didn't stop even if it wasn't the coveted Best Actress in a Musical) and she had been there; she'd walked the red carpet, she had talked to the press, posed for pictures, performed on stage at Radio City Music Hall… it had really been everything she'd rehearsed for, on kind of a grand metaphorical scale.

She had never planned the rest of it.

There was no way she could've practiced for Finn licking the back of her hand in an oddly sweet and totally disgusting way to distract her and calm her nerves. There was no way she could've practiced for her favorite part of the night being curled up in his lap and kissing him at The Plaza. There was no way she could've prepared herself for their agreement to keep their phones off until there was an ocean between them and the people who were probably blowing up their voicemail and text inboxes. There was no way she could've known that, for the entire seven-hour flight back to London from New York, all she would need to entertain herself was an iPod and a sleeping husband who pulled faces when he was dreaming.

Husband.

Of course she'd had thoughts about it when they dated, even in high school. She had even once joked about them eloping. Back then, it had never really occurred to her there would be nothing they couldn't work out, or a nearly-decade long break. It had never occurred to her there would be miles, oceans, and other people between them. They had come so far. Yet she had still dismissed the idea of getting married as completely impractical just a couple of weeks previously sitting at her fathers' house (it wasn't really her house any more).

But now, as she waited for her phone to finish turning back on, it seemed like maybe the things she hadn't practiced for and hadn't planned were actually the things that had come the easiest.

Finn was still securing the towel around his waist as he walked into the bedroom, fresh out of the shower. His toothbrush was hanging out of his mouth and she still thought he was pretty damn sexy. She thought something might be wrong with her.

"Diving in, are ya?" He asked. She was wrong before—it was his voice that was sexy. It sent a shiver up her spine and a rush through her whole body.

She turned to look at him then and shrugged a little. "Yes, well…it was probably irresponsible of me not to at least keep my phone on in case Matt called. He wasn't that thrilled with the idea I was leaving to begin with. But I _really_ need to know what I'm walking into tomorrow morning."

He rested a hand on her shoulder and she thought his thumb rubbing back and forth between her skin and the lacy strap of her tanktop might make her crazy in the best possible way.

"Yeah, we didn't really make much progress…at least, not on _that_."

Before she could answer, her phone started dancing across the desktop with alerts and notifications. It distracted her completely, and he just gave her shoulder a quick squeeze before he disappeared back down the hall toward the bathroom.

When her phone finally stilled, she had wide eyes and probably about a hundred messages between voicemail and text. She thought it might be easier to read the texts so she didn't have to hear voices. Plus, several of those were bound to be congratulations on the award from people she didn't know; congratulations were never a bad thing. And why did she have such a bad feeling about the attention anyway?

_Congratulations! Your words made me cry! _(Laney, her equity rep—who had probably had her phone in hand as she'd watched.)

_Good job! Well done! Looked beautiful! So proud! _ (Dads, random friends she barely spoke with, a couple of teachers she'd stayed in loose contact with.)

There were similar sentiments from people she'd gone to school with, people she'd worked with, people she'd written songs for. It seemed everyone was happy for her and no one really caught the reference to their elopement. In a way, it made her more nervous for her voicemails.

The first was Laney, who was in fact a blubbering mess, asking when she'd gotten married and saying her husband was gorgeous, and then telling her to call about the formalities of a name change. (Rachel had _no idea_ how complicated that process would be, but she was sure it would be considerable effort for both herself and Laney.)

The second was her dad, complete with her daddy in the background, giving her their congratulations, their pride, and their surprise; not at the marriage, but at the fact she'd let it slip during her speech. They also left a reminder that a large reception was imminent as soon as she was stateside again.

The third was Kurt. Her heart jumped up into her throat because he sounded kind of angry.

"I cannot believe my…my _other half_… and my brother _denied_ me attendance at their wedding. I've always wanted to design your dress and figure out your makeup and sing you two a sappy yet expertly timed ballad before our four hundred closest friends and family members." He let out a huffy little breath. "Someday I'm sure I will be perfectly happy for you both but…you could've at least _called_ me. I missed out and it seems you didn't even miss _me_. So now I'm just heartbroken and mad. Goodbye."

The fourth was actually Blaine, and it surprised her and unsettled her at the same time.

"So, imagine my surprise to be invited to a party by a date who happens to be very active in DC theater. He was attending a Tony Awards party, and _imagine_ my surprise to see Miss Rachel Berry accepting her very first award and thanking her _husband_. I didn't know she was nominated. I didn't know she was married. I think she owes me a weekend, a drink, and a story or two. Call me back, but congratulations on your busy weekend, darling. And your dress was beautiful."

She had a few more messages, but she stopped listening because she'd heard Finn come in and sprawl on the bed. She had already plugged his phone in for him by the nightstand and he stretched the cord so he could look at it and lay back, too.

She saw the towel around his waist come untied but she didn't say anything about it. She bit her lip and watched him as he sighed and began rubbing his thumb over the screen on his phone.

"Well, Kurt's taking this about as well as I thought," he said idly. He kept clicking with one hand, the other one draped on his bare stomach.

"His message was not kind," she agreed. She put her phone down on the desk and crawled on to the bed, just crawling right up on top of him. His hand moved from his stomach to her hip and he kept going, not saying anything about the fact she was literally sitting on top of him in nothing more than her underwear.

He _did _give her a little squeeze, though.

"He'll calm down," he said. Yeah, he heard the catch in her voice and he saw the way she felt about it in her eyes. She generally didn't particularly handle disappointing _anyone_ down very well; disappointing someone she really loved was even worse.

"I'm not sure he will," she replied. She blew out a shaky breath. "I mean, he's essentially right. I didn't think about him _at all_."

"Why should you?" He said. He dropped the hand that held and had been scrolling through his phone. He tilted his head. "I mean, as long as you thought about _me_…"

She couldn't help her smile. "Well, you might've crossed my mind."

He gave her hip another squeeze and brought the phone back up to his line of sight. He didn't have _that _many texts, but he did have about eight messages. He was still running down the list of who could've called or who would've even been watching in his head.

He guessed Katie was at least two, if not three or four of the messages. With a sigh and another glance at Rachel (who was sitting on top of him dressed in basically nothing except some lacy cotton. He loved his life) he keyed up the voicemail and pressed his phone to his ear.

Josh relayed some stuff about the band. Skip. Brandon called and relayed the same stuff about the band. Skip. Craig, with an update about the band contest. Skip.

Voicemail was pointless.

The third message was Katie. He sat up a little, leaning onto his elbow, and he had to slide his hand around Rachel so she didn't fall.

"I know your first name isn't Finnegan, but I can't middle name you because I don't know your middle name. Finnegan Whateveritis Hudson, you fucking married her? What happened to going slow and taking care of yourself and not ruining everything with a rebound? I mean, you don't have to marry her to be with her and why,_ why _do you always make permanent decisions so rashly? Marriage is forever because you are _not_ Stephen Tyler and we already knew it wasn't like you were going to lose that girl, but you just fucking moved to fucking London for fuck's sake and now…_" _There was a long pause and then the phone beeped. He was building up steam a little, planning on calling her back, but he almost had to laugh. He pulled the phone away long enough to hit the necessary button, but the next one wasn't Katie. It was Kurt.

"Finn Christopher Hudson. I forgave you for high school. I forgave you for using my Panini-maker to dry your socks. I even forgave you for _sweating_ on my 350-count Egyptian cotton spare sheets at Mom and Dad's and making them smell like a three-day bender after your little incident with Quinn. But this? This I do _not_ and _will not _forgive you for. How could you do this to me? Do you have any idea how hard it was when Carole asked if it was true and if you'd really denied her the chance to be part of your wedding after so many years of patience while you were with the wrong girl? I _do not_ do mom tears, Finn. And there were a _lot _of them. I changed my mind; I _will_ forgive you for this. But I will never—ever—forgive you for breaking your mother's heart."

He swallowed hard and his throat was a little dry. He could feel his heart pounding in his chest and he could feel the scratching at the back of his throat.

"What are they saying?" Rachel asked from his lap, twisting her fingers around each other nervously. He shifted the way he was sitting again, dragging himself up to half against the headboard and taking her with him.

"It'll be _fine_," he murmured, now rubbing his hand along her thigh. He noticed his towel had come undone and had slipped down a couple of inches when he moved, but ironically Rachel was the thing holding it in place.

"Did you listen to Kurt's? What did he say?" She asked anxiously. He shook his head and closed his eyes as he pressed the phone back to his ear. Katie's message was just ending, he didn't even hear the last word, so he replayed it.

"I can't be the _only_ one who gets hung up on by voicemail," she started off simply. "Look, someone else was leaving a message when I called back and I had a second to calm down. Basically—here's the deal. I just want you to be happy. You're like...like my little brother only you listen _less_ if that's possible considering he lives far away. Anyway, basically I just want you to be happy and so we watched the part with Rachel's award and her speech on YouTube, and they did some editing thing so it showed you and the other people in her cast when she thanked you and I have never, ever seen you look that happy, Finn. So congratulations, Mazel Tov because I think you said she's Jewish… whatever else. I'm happy for you guys. And tell Rachel good job and all that from us, too. Call soon."

The next one was from Dr. Jamison. Skip.

"Finn, it's me." His mom's shaky voice almost made his blood run cold. It only sounded like that when she was really, _really_ sad. Rachel tilted her head.

"Hey, Katie just said your acceptance speech thing is on YouTube," he said quickly. Her eyebrows went up, so he decided to make it even more sure she'd go watch. "She also said they panned to me or something."

She gasped and almost bounced on him. It actually kinda hurt but he didn't have time to say anything before she was off, kissing his cheek and going to get her computer out in the living room. He sighed and hit four to start the message over because he'd missed the entire thing.

"Finn, it's me. I was watching the ceremony on the phone with Kurt and_ you got married without me_? I'm sorry, I promised I wouldn't do this...but there are _things_, Finn…there are things a mom wants to celebrate with her child. It's always been especially true for us because for so long, it was just me and you. Thinking about who you were, what you would become, and what you could do…well, it helped me a lot. Then instead…you…you…you _eloped_? One of the things I always knew you'd do is get married, and there was a lot of time I hoped…it…b-but…but I wanted to _be there_. I wanted to watch and be part of it. _YOU'RE MARRIED, FINN_. I can't believe...Rachel was lovely tonight, and I know you love her, but, oh, Finn... please call me. Right away. I can't believe this. _Married._ Without us...without a word. I'm sorry, I just can't—"

The phone beeped the way it had for Katie, but instead of feeling like it was funny this time—maybe a little justified because Katie was _crazy_ and wouldn't shut up unless something made her—this time he felt like crap.

It had been a long time since his mom pulled out the squeaky, sniffling, disappointed-mom voice. It had been a long time since he gave her reason to. Honestly? He'd hoped the last time was _the last time_.

He wiped a hand over his face and blew out a long sigh. He set his phone down on the nightstand and tried to shake it off (after a second of wondering why he'd done all that shit a week ago to set up an international cell phone plan so he could keep his United States phone number). He knew he needed help to shake it off.

He had a feeling Rachel could (would) help him.

So he padded out into the living room, not even bothering to pick up the towel that had only been sort of secured to his waist when he stood up. He didn't bother knocking on the open door to the living room, but he smiled to see her sitting on the couch, her legs all folded up underneath her, staring intently at her computer.

She looked over at him and smiled. "You're so cute," she said simply. She let her eyes drift over him. "And kind of naked."

He shrugged and rolled his eyes. "How many times have you replayed that?"

She gave a little laugh and angled the computer so he could watch, too, even though it was still in her lap. He dropped down close to her and put his arm around her over the back of the couch. "I think this will be four." She tilted her head. "Did you listen to the rest of your messages?"

He took a deep breath and let it out slow. "Yeah. Katie and Josh say congratulations—for both things."

She nodded. "They're really nice," she agreed.

Finn laughed a little bit and brushed his hand against her shoulder. "They are _not_. But they sure like you."

"Did your mom call? I assume Kurt made sure they were watching the show."

"Yes—to both things. She loves you, too," he said. He didn't want to get into the rest of it with her; not really. She was still high from her win and he didn't want to bring her down in any way. He could call his mom. He could help her feel better about their choice.

"What else did she say?" She asked.

"She asked me to call her soon."

"You should," she agreed.

"I'll call her tomorrow," he agreed. He pressed a kiss to Rachel's head. "Right now I have some other plans."

"You do?" She asked. He didn't miss the way her eyes dropped down.

"I do," he breathed. He used the hand on her shoulder to point. "Let's watch this real quick."

It looked like, from the stuff on the side of the page, the person had uploaded cut videos of every category, just the winner and their speech. He thought he might send tonygeek1018 a thank you email or something. He didn't want to rewatch the whole show, but Rachel was pretty excited about this video.

He had to admit, he felt proud when he saw Rachel Berry Hudson – Best Supporting Actress Winner as the title of the video. He watched again as they said her name, the camera stopped on her face, and he moved to the side so she could get out. He'd thought he was feeling and seeing _everything_ there when that whole tiny corner of the world was watching them, but in the video…she was _glowing_. She was _so_ happy. And she seemed extra happy when she looked at him for that second before she squeezed past and made her way up to the stage.

And sure enough, while she was talking, it did a split screen (he thought he'd seen stupid awards shows do that before and he had a feeling he should remember they did it so he didn't get caught picking his nose or something gross) and had her on one side, then the cast of her play on the other—which was where he'd been sitting. And Katie was right. He had the added element where it was damn weird to see _himself_ sitting there, like some kind of out-of-body experience. But he could tell he was happy; then again, he knew how he'd felt and happy didn't really even touch it.

It was still the case, by the way. No matter what anyone else said, he was happy they were here. He hoped she was happy they were here.

She closed her computer without turning it off and then twisted to set it at their feet before she launched herself at him. He landed on his back on the couch with a grunt, all tangled up in her.

"I think Katie was right. What do you think?"

"I think you're wearing too many clothes," he said.

"Well, that's easy enough to fix," she whispered. She yanked the tanktop off her head roughly and tossed it behind her. She laid back on top of him and kissed him as they both shifted on the couch to get more comfortable. "Now what?"

He shook his head and slid his hands against her skin, under the waistband of her underwear, and palmed her butt. "Still too much." Her legs dropped to either side of his legs and he felt how warm and damp she was against his bare skin and it just turned him on faster. He groaned a little, thrusting against the pressure when she shifted against him, but then she was on her knees and not even touching him and that was just…that was just a no. He couldn't stay that way forever. Or for a second. Whatever–same difference.

"Babe," he protested breathlessly. She lifted one leg up and did some girly ninja trick and all of a sudden, she was just as naked as he was. (The blood in his body was busy. Forgive him for not remembering all the details.)

"I'm here," she breathed. Her hands were warm against his chest as she slid back up his body. If her hands were warm, though, it was nothing compared to her tongue. She trailed it up his body and he shivered even though he wasn't cold.

"You're so hot," he said. "I'm so lucky."

"I know," she said easily. Then instead of continuing up his body, she drifted back down and his head bounced off the arm of the couch. She looked up at him with a smile that was…well...he didn't know what it was but it was _trouble_. For him. It made him weak in the knees and he was laying down for hell's sake.

"But you…" she started from where she was crumpled up in a heap at the far end of the couch. Her breath danced over his erection and he felt it tighten up. His eyes closed. "…you're beautiful. And you're mine."

"What're you gonna do with me?" He asked, barely able to get the words out because her tongue hit him. He was so warm her tongue almost felt _cold_ on first contact.

"Right now I'm going to take you in," she said before she surrounded him entirely, her tongue stroking him in firm, even curls all the way up his length. He crumpled his hands into fists and resisted the urge to wrap his fingers through her hair. His legs relaxed to give her more room and he felt the dull scrape of her fingernails on his thighs, then shivered when she pulled away. She slowly drew a line with her tongue and when she kissed him, her thigh was pressed right against his scrotum and he pushed against her a little bit, needing friction and about a hundred other things he couldn't have even explained. It was just _her_. He needed her.

"Sorry…I just…" she said. His eyes opened a little and she was…what? Apologizing for giving him warm-up head? He was so hard he knew she would like it; he had basically no problem with her using his body for that.

"What, babe?" He said. He let his hand drift over the curve of her ass as she moved over him again.

"I think you need something from me," she admitted. He scowled a little bit, but not in a mad way. "What we did…" she started. She tripped her fingers over his forehead and down the side of his face then his jaw. He turned his head into her touch and hummed from the back of his throat what her touch was doing to him. She leaned forward and pressed a soft kiss to the corner of his mouth, then let her tongue slip out to wet his lips as she kissed him more insistently. He felt her other hand reach down to where they hovered, barely touching, until all of a sudden, he was inside her and she was lowering herself onto him slowly.

She let out a raspy breath and stopped when he was pressed all the way inside her, buried as far as he could go.

"It was right, and even if someone is angry now, it doesn't change anything. I love you."

"How…what…"

She moved up slowly; he could see her perfect body, muscles in her stomach and her legs working together as she lifted herself and then impaled herself on him again, more swiftly this time, and then he couldn't really look anymore. She leaned forward a little and the velvet glove around him tightened.

"I love you," he agreed. "How did you know?"

"Because…" she gasped out. "Mmm."

"Rachel," he said, his voice sharp enough her eyes came open and focused on him. They could say all the most important words without actually talking. They loved each other; everything else was just words and everything else would either work or it wouldn't; either way they were together, joined and…more than just one.

He let a hand come up off her hips to slip her hair over her shoulder, but as he moved to prop his leg up again, her head went back entirely and he felt her clench around him again. Her hips picked up momentum, swiveling as she pressed down on him again and again, moving faster and with more purpose. He grabbed her hips, and because she was so tiny, it meant he could press a thumb against her clit. He didn't move his thumb at all, just left it where it bore down on her constantly.

"Finn…" she whined. "Come on…"

"Tell me what you want…" he said.

Honestly, watching her ride him was enough for him. He knew as soon as she lost it, he would too.

"Move," she said. "Move…move…move..." she bit her lip.

It was like the eye of a storm, all of sudden, and he could form actual words. "I love you. I don't…this is all I want. Forever. Just you, baby. Just you."

His thumb barely made one small circle before she slumped forward, curling her fingers into his chest and clamping down all around him, letting go in a wet rush that drowned him in the best possible way. He dug his fingers into her hips and drove his up into her as hard as he could before he let go, too, still feeling her pulsing all around him as she gasped for breath and left fingernail marks on his torso. The feeling of her nails digging in was almost a second painful pleasure and he wondered if that's how she felt about his tight grip on her hips.

She eventually lifted up just enough his softening erection slid out of her body and then lay down right on top of him to fit her head under his chin.

She turned her head and kissed his chest where it was still moving a little irregularly, jagged breathing an odd syncope to his perfectly metered heartbeat. He was so warm, so real and solid beneath her; and now he always would be. She put her hand flat on his chest, right above his heart.

"Remember when you told me if we did this, I couldn't leave?" She said. She dropped her head back a little and it landed on his shoulder. He brought his hand up to wrap around hers on his chest.

"Yeah…" he said. "Funny how I never even think about that now."

"It seems like this all took forever, but it's gone pretty fast," she agreed. "Just give your mom time. She'll come around."

He swallowed and nodded before he pressed a kiss to her forehead. "You're smart, too."

"Yeah, I know," she agreed, burying her face in his neck and giggling when he tickled her side in protest to her arrogance.

"Y'know what you're _not_?" He asked, digging his finger lightly into the magic spot between her side and her back that always made her squirm.

"No, what?"

"_Done_," he promised, hooking her leg around him as he stood swiftly to carry them to their room. "You're nowhere near done."

"I know I'm not," she said, her grin spreading when he just rolled his eyes and groaned at her pun.

He wondered if she _always_ had to be right, but he was pretty sure he already knew the answer.


	3. Three: In her Own Little World

**A/N: **Major thanks to** Laura **for sappy girling through the song at the end with me. Ha. She put up with a lot of YouTube videos and my ranting about how wrong it is that Zachary Levi looks like that, sings, _and_ he's hilarious. Also, this is for** Lizzie, **who needs something to do this afternoon. And for** Jen and Wendi **who are both too busy to read - TWO DAYS. **To everyone else, thank you. **The response this story has received so far is amazing; especially after Mara recommended it's predecessor. So thank you to those who have been reading, who are reading, and who are newly reading. **Please drop me a line here or on tumblr and let me know what you think of this part. **

**Disclaimer: ** I don't own Glee, **Uncertainly Certain **by **Green River Ordinance **(where I snagged the chapter title from), or **I See the Light **as performed by Mandy Moore and Zachary Levi for the Disney movie **Tangled**. I have no idea who wrote that second one and quite frankly, I'm too lazy to look it up, but that doesn't mean I own it and no infringement is intended; I'm certainly not making money from this.

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter Three: Beautiful Girl in her Own Little World<strong>

Rachel frowned, looking at the clock on her nightstand. Finn had sprawled while she was putting on makeup and he was mostly face down. He was hugging both the pillows tightly to his face and chest, his feet hanging off the bed. Not because the bed wasn't long enough, but because he was laying in the middle of it for whatever reason.

He was adorable and she really didn't want to leave him. Especially not for the job she wasn't really digging. But today was informal, really; no investors, no outsiders coming into the small office she shared until they were ready to move the entire production to the actual theater. It didn't matter if she was wearing shorts (longer, Bermuda-style) and a tank top; it didn't matter if she was wearing her plain black Espadrilles instead of her "Austen Powers heels". She was definitely dressed for comfort but she wasn't exactly _comfortable_—not like she'd been the night of the Tony's.

All that really mattered was she had to leave him and she really didn't want to. They had been together non-stop for five days and she didn't like the feeling that her leaving this morning was the start of lots of separation. She was trying so hard not to think of what would happen in just a couple short weeks when he had to go all the way back to Ohio for the band competition. He could tour after that and not come back for a long time. She toyed with the still-unfamiliar band on her finger. She hadn't insisted on an engagement ring; it seemed useless as they shopped quickly, rushing with the short time between when they'd decided to get married and when they actually did get married. She didn't need an engagement ring because it wasn't like they actually had an engagement.

It didn't mean she didn't love the ring she ended up with. They'd stopped in at Tiffany and Co. as a joke; Finn was an unemployed school teacher and she was a money hoarder so going to a high-end jewelry store really didn't make a lot of sense (not that getting married particularly made sense either.) She'd fallen in love with the unique band quickly, though, and had brushed off his protest that it wasn't enough; it was a rose gold eternity band, but it was alternating X and O shapes around the band, and each O-shape had a small diamond in the middle. It was delicate and it was small—by a lot of standards, it wasn't much. But it was everything; it was a reminder of everything and she loved it just the way it was.

Kind of like the guy snoozing in front of her.

She sighed and finally crawled onto the bed enough she could hover over him and kiss his cheek. He turned his head into her lips with a groan and brought his hand up to squeeze her waist.

"I have to go," she mumbled against his scruffy skin.

"Mmm…" he said and it sounded like a protest. "Want me to come with?"

"Of course I do, but you look so happy where you are."

"That's 'cause you're here," he said, his voice still deep and rough with sleep.

"You _do_ have things to do eventually, though. I don't know when I'll be back… but you really should call your mother."

He let in a deep breath through his nose and slipped his hand from her waist to his stomach. "I should but I don't want to."

"Remember back in the day when reputation was everything to you?" She sighed. "Well, I still feel that way, only my concerns are more immediate. Like I don't want your mother to hate me or think I'm pregnant."

He opened one eye all the way. "You aren't, are you?"

She gave a little laugh and shook her head. "No. But that doesn't mean you can get out of calling your mother until I am."

"This is way too much talking for morning," he said. He suddenly seized both sides of her waist and dragged her on top of them, both of them grunting with the force of the contact.

"I seriously have to go," she said regretfully. "Call me later?"

"Yeah, okay," he said. "Hey, will you check on that practice space for me?" He let his hand latch onto hers as she started to pull away.

He knew he was totally screwing his band over by not being around for their practices leading up to the music festival thing; he needed to call Brandon and make some sort of a deal about it all, but he had to have some sort of possibility lined up first. She had agreed to talk to her producer and see if there was a studio, like where the studio drummers for the musicals practiced or something, he could borrow. It seemed pointless to ship his drums all the way to London when he would have to take them back and also they had nowhere near enough space in the small apartment. _Flat._ Whatever.

"Oh, right," she said and she nodded. She leaned forward and kissed him one more time. "Okay, I really _have_ to go or I'm going to miss my train."

He sighed and let her hand go entirely. "Okay," he agreed. "Go or I won't let you."

Her laughter trailed down the hall after her, and he swore it still rang in his ears a little even after she was gone.

* * *

><p>"So let me get this straight," Thomas said, eyes narrowing even as he looked toward his wife on the other side of the table. "You got <em>married<em> last weekend? Were you even dating anyone?"

Rachel just nodded, her eyes sliding over to his wife, Bridget. Her mouth was set in a straight line, but she was just watching Thomas and at least not giving Rachel an evil glare (as seemed to be her usual pattern.) "I was dating someone—coincidentally, I'm now married to him."

"That's insane," he said. He tossed his napkin onto the table and sat back in his chair. "Utterly insane. Were you engaged first? How did…how do you just decide to get married and…and go do it?"

She speared a bite of salad onto her fork and raised it to her mouth, letting it hover there as she spoke. "The same way you quite likely decided to get married…just with a more truncated format because we wanted to do it while we were still in New York. How did you two decide to get married and then 'go do it'?" She dug, scooping the salad into her mouth as he sputtered for an answer.

"That's really none of your business," Bridget said as she looked over at Rachel and then folded her arms across her chest.

Rachel gave Thomas a hooded glance and his dark eyes moved from her face to that of his wife. "Lighten up, Bridge. She was just answering my question."

"I don't see the value in engaging in such personal conversation while we have _so much_ work to do to compensate for her trivial absence."

"Oh, I apologize," Rachel said. She tilted her head. "I didn't realize securing an award that will actually help advertise _this_ play could be considered trivial. How stupid of me."

Bridget opened her mouth to reply as Matt came in and totally interrupted the conversation (thank God.)

"Rachel," he said simply. Rachel just shook her head, made a noise of disgust, and excused herself from the table. She must've had a look on her face, because he raised an eyebrow at her as he escorted her from the room. They went into his office, the next room over, and sat down.

"Firstly, congratulations on your awards," he said. She didn't react because she knew he wasn't finished. "Secondly, congratulations on your…marriage."

"Why do you say it like that?" She asked with a scowl.

"Easy, tiger. It just seemed sudden, but it's your decision through and through. I just want to make sure it doesn't affect your work here."

"It shouldn't," she said simply. "You know Finn's been living here with me; he has a few things going with his own band so I'm not sure how much he'll actually _be_ here but we were already together when I came here so it shouldn't change much."

He nodded. "Okay, fair enough. That being said, honestly, last week before you left was your best work thus far….but today your focus has seemed scattered."

She blinked. "I was here two hours before them," she pointed out, as she literally pointed to the small room where the Davies' were still eating lunch.

"I'm not questioning your dedication, Rachel."

"That's exactly what you were doing," she said. "My personal life is just that—_personal._ I will keep it that way if you and they will. End of story."

"Is keeping 'personal things personal' your reasoning for asking me about rehearsal space for your husband?"

She sighed, let in a deep breath, and blinked. "No."

He nodded and smirked a little. "Well, I don't have any specific connections to _drummers_, per se," he started. "However, knowing things about theater here is seeming to pay off somewhat if your husband is interested." He was toying with a business card, and stopped abruptly as he considered something. "Perhaps I should _meet_ him before I refer him to an associate, just to make sure I'm comfortable having my name associated with his. Although, given your abrupt name change, I suppose it is related anyway."

"What are you saying?" She asked, struggling to keep her voice neutral.

"Does he have any experience drumming professionally other than this rock band of his?" Matt asked. He leaned forward over his desk, his hazel eyes piercing in the steadiness of their gaze.

"I'm not sure if he has other experience, but he minored in orchestral instrument performance in college," she replied. She shrugged a little. "So he's certainly _qualified_ even if he's not that experienced."

"Do you know what that entailed as far as his degree?" He asked. "I've never heard of such a thing."

She shook her head. "To be honest, I'd never heard of it either. My school didn't really have anything like that."

He just nodded. "Okay, well… if you'd like to send Mr. Hudson—"

"—Finn," she interjected.

"Finn, then. If you'd like to send Finn in so I can at least meet him, I'll pass this information onto him. If you feel he'd be interested."

"What information?" She asked.

"They are currently looking for at least a drummer, if not other portions of a full band, to fill the live band role in the production of American Idiot they'll be starting casting on shortly."

"American Idiot is coming to West End?" She asked.

"Yes, I'm afraid so," he confirmed. "But it sounds like perhaps something that would be right up Finn's alley…unless you would prefer to have him touring with a rock band."

"That's not exactly my decision," she admitted. She twisted her hands together. "When would you like to meet him?"

"What's he doing now?" Matt demanded. "It seems we're not getting anywhere on the second act today anyway."

She huffed out a breath, ignoring his passive-aggressive dig at her work ethic. If she could keep her mouth shut and give Finn any sort of opportunity, she realized she would manage to do it in a heartbeat.

Maybe she was settling into this wifely role easier than she'd expected.

* * *

><p>Finn squinted as he looked down at the text message Rachel had sent, needing to tilt his phone to make out the words because of the way the sun hit the screen. He thought this might be the right building. He clicked a couple things on his phone and held it to his ear.<p>

"Hey," Rachel's voice said almost immediately. "Are you here?"

"I think so," he said. "I might be on the sidewalk in front of the building. This city is confusing."

"I know," she agreed. "Well, I'll come out and see if you're right. I'll be right down, okay? Bye."

"Okay, bye," he replied. He didn't want to go inside in case it _was_ the wrong building because he was lame and that would be embarrassing.

It was a few minutes before Rachel appeared, holding the glass door open and looking at him with a barely-concealed smile on her face. He couldn't hide _his_ and stepped inside before she laced her hands through his and then went up a little on her toes to kiss him. The metal-on-metal feel of their wedding bands locking was a little weird; it was another thing he thought he'd have to get used to. He hadn't taken the wedding band off in the three days since they did this thing; he was at least not feeling it on his finger every time he moved his hand now.

"Hi," she said, pulling away from the kiss and stepping away from him. She waved at the receptionist, who had an eyebrow cocked, and then took his right hand in both of hers.

"Hi," he echoed, laughing a little as she pulled him toward the stairs. (The stairs, Finn. Elevators are a waste of exercise potential—_yes, even in New York_.)

"So long story short, Matt wanted to meet you, which is _not _something I ever wanted to put you through because on the whole, he's atrocious, persnickety, and just a total pain in the ass one hundred and ten percent of the time."

"Per…persnickety?" Finn mumbled. She kept talking—while they were walking up the stairs. She was taking them at light speed, not realizing he might be even a little inhibited by his size.

"—so then he said he would have to meet you before he could really make any sort of judgment and the whole thing is really weird and it's not like you can really do it or decide because of the band contest, but I guess it's good to know you have options, I suppose. Oh, and be prepared to tell him exactly what your college minor entailed because I didn't really know what to say so I'm sure he's going to ask and—"

She had used his own hand for leverage to round on him once they reached the heavy metal door labeled _Floor 4_. He took advantage of it to pull her next to him and kiss some shut up into her.

Once he pulled away a little, she blinked up at him. His arm had come around her back to hold her up while they were kissing and he felt the dead weight of her boneless self in his arms. He smiled down at her a little. Damn, he was _good_. (So was she because no…that wasn't a banana in his pocket. He was happy to see her.)

"So I'm supposed to be nervous?" He asked.

"No," she said. She reached up to cup his cheek. "You're supposed to just be yourself. I'll be in the next room over and I'll be the total wreck." She was on her toes, giving him one more too-short kiss before she turned to reach for the door.

"Wait…what? You won't be in there with me?" He said. He wondered when he'd become the adult that was unable to go into a meeting without his wife. Then again, it wasn't like he'd ever met with a producer she openly disliked, either.

"No," she breathed. "Sorry…I was told in no uncertain terms that I have work to do." They stopped in front of a closed office door and he looked around a little for the first time. He hadn't really imagined she would work in an _office_, even for this part. It seemed kind of weird. But it was definitely _corporate_. It just really didn't fit with the image he had of Rachel's professional life. "I will be in there, though." She pointed her thumb over her shoulder to the room across the hall. "And I could use your help with something when you're done."

"Okay," he said. He leaned down and kissed her cheek.

She smiled sweetly before she opened the office door without knocking.

"Matt?"

"Oh, yes….hello." He said, turning in his chair. The first thing Finn really noticed was that everything about this guy appeared _neat_. His hair was nearly entirely white, but cropped close to his head. He had a salt-and-pepper goatee but it was well trimmed. He was wearing a brown suitjacket with a black shirt underneath, and Finn wondered if he was the kinda guy who had leather patches on his elbows. That's how the school principal had been and well…he didn't really like that. He thought leather patches meant to those people they could act like totally stuck-up assholes. Or maybe he had it backwards, and they had leather patches because they were stuck-up assholes.

He automatically didn't want Rachel to have to work here if she hated it.

"You must be Finn Hudson," he said, moving from the chair to stand and cross the room. When he stood, Finn realized they were equal height and build, which was unusual for Finn; he was so used to having a size advantage. Finn looked over his shoulder at Rachel, but it was more of a glance than anything else, before he reached his hand out to the guy in front of him.

"Yes. You must be Matt Jones," Finn said. The guy cracked a smile—if that's what you could call it—and motioned to the chair opposite where he'd been sitting at the desk.

"I've been called worse," he said simply. "Won't you please have a seat?"

"Sure," Finn said. He sat down and rubbed his hands over the thighs on his black pants—he didn't have many clothes here but he didn't want to embarrass Rachel, either—and looked over his shoulder at her. She just smiled, pressed a kiss to her fingertips, then waved at him as she slipped out of the room.

And his heartbeat jumped up into his throat.

* * *

><p>"So then I was thinking that we could do an extra verse where they sing the song kind of <em>over<em> each other, almost like a round… what would that do to the run time?" She tapped the bottom of her pen on the notepad. "We can sing it out if you want and see how long it would take."

"No, we _really_ can't," Thomas said. "Must I remind you that I'm not a singer? My wife forbade me from singing in the shower even. It's that bad."

Finn tapped his knuckle on the open door to her office.

"Hey," she said, her grin lighting up her entire face. The sheer force of it made him smile, too.

"Hey you," he said back. "If I'm bugging you I can just go."

"No you _cannot_," she replied instantly, out of her seat and pulling him into the office. "I need your help with something, remember?"

"I think you maybe mentioned it," he teased.

"How was meeting the illustrious Matt Jones?" She asked with an eyebrow raised. As soon as he was safely inside, she closed the door.

"It was interesting," he admitted. "Did you know what he was going to say?"

She remembered the boy who begged her not to lie to him ever again; she remembered her honesty breaking him over and over again until she finally ran away. And she remembered that her honesty was what had gotten them this far (well…that and some other things.)

"Yes," she said simply.

"Do you think I should do it?"

"I think it's your choice what you do," she said, keeping her voice carefully metered. "But we can talk about that later. I need to borrow your voice."

"…okay," he said. He shook his head, and when he did, he caught sight of the guy tucked onto a loveseat in the corner. While she was explaining, a blonde with tight ponytail came in. Her severe expression reminded him of Quinn in high school. The only thing that kept the image from being complete was that she was dressed in head-to-toe brown rather than a cheerleading uniform.

The guy he hadn't paid attention to gave the girl a quick explanation, and he was a little distracted from it but Rachel pressed some handwritten sheet music into his hand and it made him look down.

Geez. He hoped he could remember how to read music with actual notes instead of percussive rhythm. He didn't normally look at sheet music to drum anyway; this was gonna be a stretch.

"Well, this song is essentially the same as in the movie. I just changed the end," she said. She reached out and patted his knee. "So you can just kind of pretend you remember how to do this. You know the song so…"

He narrowed his eyes. "I, ah…actually I don't."

She sat up a little straighter. "What?"

"I've never seen this movie," he admitted. (It kinda felt good; she'd made comments about how he knew, like especially when they were working on the music before they left for New York. He'd managed to avoid telling her… because he knew _exactly_ what they were doing for their night in.)

She held her hand up and her voice was a little sharper. "_What_?"

"C'mon," he begged. "I was, like, a dude in high school when this came out and…"

"… weren't you dating Quinn when this came out?"

"Yes, and she had some deal with her sister about watching Disney movies so it meant I never, ever had to do it."

Rachel sat back and folded her arms. "No wonder you came to me so…so…unschooled."

He shook his head. "Says the girl who called Kiss 'that band with all the face paint.'"

"That's _still_ what I call them."

"Oh my God, _no_," he protested. They were _not_ watching a Disney movie tonight; they were listening to one of the greatest rock bands of _all time_.

The guy in the corner raised his hand. "Excuse me, but… well, we still have to finish figuring out this scene or Matt's going do that stomping thing again," he said. "Can we please just finish?"

"Absolutely," Rachel said, sending a sly glance Finn's way before she moved over to the digital piano and started the track she'd recorded. "Basically, the problem in the movie's scoring was a long musical break during which they showed a montage of scenes we would basically be unable to duplicate, so I was concerned about the song itself dragging. However, this song is essential to the story."

Bridget raised an eyebrow. "So…rather than filling the musical space, why not just cut the song?"

"Because we're already dialogue-heavy in the second half," Rachel replied pointedly. She stopped the track and started it over from the piano. "Finn, if you please."

He rolled his eyes and stood up, moving beside her as she started singing.

_All those days, watching from windows; all those years outside looking in. All that time, never even knowing just how blind I've been. Now I'm here, blinking in the starlight. Now I'm here and suddenly I see. _

She trailed her hand over his chest and he looked down at her with a smile. Other than the Madonna mashup repeat that he'd kissed her for, it had been a _really, really_ long time since they'd actually sung together. All the little physical things, all the sexy glances she shot him…he'd kind of forgotten about them. She stepped away but she was still watching him as she let her voice burst out.

_Standing here, it's all so clear I'm where I'm meant to be. And at last I see the light… and it's like the fog has lifted. And at last I see the light and it's like the sky is new. And it's warm and real and bright and the world has somehow shifted. _

She paused and closed her eyes as she started into the last, breathy line. He kind of hoped to hell his part just went like hers; because he couldn't look at the music and watch her at the same time, and well… staring at her had won that battle. It was kind of like old times.

_All at once everything looks different, now that I see you._

He swallowed hard and glanced down at the music and almost missed his entrance. Yeah…it really was just like old times. She was the professional here, not him. Only now he was totally content to just let her be.

_All those days chasing down a daydream, all those years living in a blur. All that time, never truly seeing things the way they were. Now she's here, shining in the starlight. Now she's here, suddenly I know. If she's here it's crystal clear I'm where I'm meant to go. _

Once he knew he was on the right note, it was easier to sing with some confidence; he just had to be looking at her and see the encouragement in her eyes to actually do it. Then she joined in and he had to look at his music again 'cause he realized he totally didn't have the melody. Whoops.

_And at last I see the light and it's like the fog has lifted. And at last I see the light and it's like the sky is new. And it's warm and real and bright and the world has somehow shifted. _

He looked over at her and he thought maybe there was something to this Disney crap, because he knew he'd figured a lot of stuff out and everything in his life always fit together better when she was around. And it seemed kinda like that's what the song was saying. He thought maybe her idea would just make everything…more confusing. Like maybe she should just leave the song the way it was.

_All at once, everything is different now that I see you._

She watched him and knew he would struggle a little for the high note at the end. She wanted to sing _more_ with him. But somehow she knew she should leave the song as it was written and not toy with the middle as she'd planned to do once they were done. The song was perfect as-was.

_Now that I see you._

He hit the note she had thought would be a struggle for him; it had been a long time since she'd worked with him on improving his vocal range, but it had obviously improved all the same.

"Umm…remind me why you aren't playing Rapunzel again?" Thomas asked as the song faded out. It snapped Finn and Rachel back into the real world.

"Uh…um…"

"Her jealous husband doesn't want her macking on the hottest guy in the West End," Finn said simply, stepping neatly out of the way as she tried to swat him with the notebook in her hand.

"I signed on to play Mother Goethel," Rachel said simply.

"You would be enchanting as the lead, though," Thomas persisted. Rachel looked over at Bridget and saw her jaw set and she just…she wasn't sure if Thomas was hitting on her or merely commenting on her abundantly obvious talent. She wasn't about to comment regardless.

"I don't think you should do the mashup thing in the middle," Finn said, seeing the eye contact Rachel was making with either person. He could tell she was shaking a little, almost like she was waiting for someone to say something _mean_. He hated these people and he wanted to get her out of there. "Even if you cut it short, the way you have it is good 'cause the song is about things being clear."

Rachel looked back over at him. "But the harmonies…"

"There wouldn't really be any more harmonies than there already are in the song later because they sing the same notes, and like half the words in each part are the same so it would just sound like someone forgot the words," he pointed out. "If you want to extend the music in the second act, you should find a different spot to do it." He kept his eyes on her the whole time he was talking and it was getting to the point that he could _feel_ her looking at him.

"Will you help me?" She asked. Her voice was not as steady as her protests before and when she bit her lip, he knew he was just done and he thought she might be, too. They needed to get home.

He nodded, still not looking away from her. "Can we work from home again like last time?"

She finally broke their heated gaze, looking over at Thomas and Bridget. "So…um… okay, if you plan three minutes and twenty-eight seconds for this song, we'll call it good. And that means there's really only the final track rundown at the end for me to put together. Right?"

Thomas nodded and Bridget scowled.

"Right," Thomas agreed. "Let Matt know you're leaving?"

"Will do," Rachel agreed. She shot Finn a quick smile as she took the music from him and tucked it along with the notepad she'd held into her laptop bag. "I'll have the sheet music printed out properly tomorrow."

She moved to sling the bag over her shoulder but Finn reached his hand out and took in from her to hang it on his own shoulder. She raised an eyebrow at him and took the hand he held out to her at the same time.

"Matt already told me to take you home," he said simply as they walked down the hall toward the stairwell.

"He did?" She asked in surprise; the producer/director was well-known for basically never wanting anyone to stop working. Of course, he was always working too, so maybe there was something in there about misery loving company.

"Yes. I think I surprised him by mentioning four percussive instruments he'd never heard of when he asked what I could play."

She couldn't stop her laugh. "What? _Like what_?"

He shrugged and just pulled her closer with an arm around her shoulder. "Eh. We have, like, our whole lives to get into that. I gotta keep _some _mystery," he teased.

He wondered how long it would be until he actually told her. Or showed her.


	4. Four: Started as a Fist Fight

**A/N: ** Thanks muchly for all the support on this one and the first one. You guys are amazing. Sorry for the long delay but I had some hell to raise. :) Definite props here to **Laura (tjcrowfoot) and Jen (wants2beawriter) **as they helped me know when to flip the switch and provided endless encouragement. Also, this part is long so take a bathroom break, grab a drink, and enjoy. Let me know what you think!

**Disclaimer: **I don't own nor am I affiliated with Glee. The chapter title is from **Uncertainly Certain **by **Green River Ordinance** and I don't own the song, the lyrics, or the band either.

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter Four: Started As a Fist Fight <strong>

Rachel wasn't so lucky about getting out of work early the following night. He'd gotten everything basically arranged for the conference call thing tomorrow (it'll be afternoon his time even if it's like seven a.m. in Ohio) and was just kind of messing around on the piano. He wasn't much of a piano player, but he had picked up a few things and he wondered if he could even write a song that wasn't for or about Rachel. But it wasn't like he was making any progress beyond worrying about where she was. It was nearly ten o'clock and his last text from her had been three hours ago, apologizing and saying they still weren't done with the act one revising.

He sighed when he heard his phone ring, hoping it was her coming home. He was _bored_, honestly. He vaguely remembered being stretched super thin in high school, but now he wondered how it had been possible. Without work, band practice, random basketball games, and with no social life to speak of, he was giving London five more minutes before it drove him totally fucking nuts. Turned out he wanted to be busy all the time.

Anyway, right. The phone was ringing. He picked it up off the couch without looking at it and figured if it was Rachel, it gave him just enough time to move his shit from the couch cushions so he didn't ruin her life or something.

"..'lo?" He said; he'd underestimated the weight of that particular box and the word came out more like a grunt.

"Finn?" A familiar, far away voice said. He needed to sit down. He was glad he'd moved the box, even if it had just ended up on the floor.

He blew out a long breath. "Hello, Quinn."

"Where are you?" She asked eventually. The connection was a little clearer and he wondered if she'd moved or something. Like—not out of the apartment. Just like three feet to the left or something. Their apartment always had terrible reception.

"Um…I'm at…at home, I guess."

He looked around and swallowed hard. His boxes from Katie and Josh's house had started arriving. Katie had warned it would be in a few different groups on account of her car being tiny and her time being limited. What was the saying? It wasn't something about home being where your stuff was.

"With Rachel?" She asked.

"Technically, no. At least, not right now," he said. "She's still at work."

"That's where _you_ should be, isn't it?"

"I don't have a job yet but I'm just fine with where I'm at," he replied immediately. "What's…why are you calling?"

"You're married?" She said simply. "You…you married Rachel?"

"Who told you?"

"The Tony's photo spread in People magazine," she replied easily. "It…" she blew out a breath. "It wasn't the best way to find out. I mean, Finn…we've been broken up for like five minutes." He just put his head in his hands, using his shoulder to hold the phone to his ear, and let her continue. Her voice was cracking. "And…and we've done that before, you know?"

"Broken up? Yeah, I know," he cut in.

"You've always come back those other times." She sniffled a little. "You could've… you could've at least told me you weren't coming back."

He wasn't sure what to say. Was there some sort of recent-ex rule that said you had to tell them when you moved on? He didn't know because he'd never really been in the situation before. Quinn and Rachel…Rachel and Quinn… in some pretty sick and twisted ways, they had always been tied together in his life. He'd kind of hoped the tie was broken, that now he was only tied to Rachel, but…but maybe that wasn't the case.

"I thought leaving my key on the counter and then locking the door behind me kinda said it," he admitted.

"I offered so many times…why…um. You married her? _Really_?"

"Yeah," he said. If there was one thing he'd learned from Rachel—or y'know, life in general—it's that honesty was the best policy.

"It's just such a _mistake_," she said. Her voice had a nervous, nearly crazy edge to it. Was she desperate? What did she think she was _fighting_ for? Everything with him and her was a done deal. "All she ever did was run away, Finn. I was…I still _am_…what you need."

"What do you mean?"

"You need someone who is there with you; someone who can make a life with you because they don't have other distractions. She's always been that…just distracted. She can't be stable and stay in one place and give you what you need. And you know that, or at least you used to." She cleared her throat. "I can…I can handle your confusion with Rachel. I'll wait. It doesn't _have_ to be over."

"I'm…I'm sorry, Q, but it sorta is," he said. She was breaking up –like, her voice and not the phone line. He was not. He'd never been more certain he was telling the truth. "I'm not confused about Rachel—for once in my life, I'm not confused about her or about you or about _myself_."

"How can you say that? You quit your job. You quit the most stable relationship in your life. You quit and for what?"

"You had to see or had to know that I wasn't happy there," he argued. "You knew. That's why I was so mad when I found out what you said to Rachel. It didn't matter if it was, like, ten years old."

"Being happy isn't always practical," she said. "And in life, you'll be happier at some times than at others. That's just the way it works. You make concessions and you make relationships work even when you aren't happy in them."

"You're okay living like that?" He asked. "'cause I'm totally not and I'm way better off."

"That's because this is new. We were happy in the beginning, too."

He shook his head and stood up, frustration making him too restless to sit still. "I don't know how to say it and be the nice guy…I just…I don't think I was ever really that happy."

"Are you saying you lied? You didn't love me and you stayed with me for that long? You promised me things and you knew you weren't happy?"

"It's not that I didn't love you…" he started. "It's never been like that, okay? You…Quinn, there _were _ good things about being with you and there were parts I was happy with. There were times I was happy, but…but…"

"Then how can you just give it all up? You never even wanted to talk about getting married in all that time. You were learning or whatever it was and…and then you've been with her for…well, unless you cheated on me, you've only been with her for a month and a half. So you weren't even willing to discuss a future with me and now you've already leapt into one with her?"

"I didn't cheat on you," he said in a low voice. "That was always your thing, _not_ mine."

"Low blow, Finn. Do we really want to start talking about ancient history here or do we want to focus on the present and adult versions of ourselves?"

"Whatever, fine. Look at right now. The thing is…I don't want to talk to you about my relationship with Rachel. They aren't related."

"They _are_. They always have been," she protested. He could hear tears in her voice and he really, really didn't want to talk to a crying girl. He'd kind of been through this in a few different breakups and it never sucked any less as it turned out—whether they'd been together five minutes, one night or…or three years.

"I know," he agreed. "But they can't be any more, okay? I just…it's better this way, even if you don't think so right now."

"What I want to know is how someone who is so adamant about not getting married turns around and elopes with someone they barely know." She sniffled again, and he could picture her. He could picture the exact pajamas she was wearing, the crappy half falling-apart couch she was sitting on, with her hair tied back and the magazine at her side. He _knew _right where she was and, if he was being honest, where she would always be. He knew he couldn't stay there; as frustrated as he was bound to be with all the changes going on in his life at the moment, he knew staying in the same place would've been worse. Doing what he'd been doing for so long was killing him; and maybe it wasn't literally killing him, but now that he'd actually _felt_ things he couldn't go back to _not_ feeling things.

"I knew what our life was. And sure…I don't know what life is for me and Rachel but…but I just know I wanted to marry her. That's all. I can't explain it different than that."

"Did _she_ propose to _you_?"

"Do you really want to hear this, Quinn?" He burst out. "I mean… does it help you feel better?"

"I don't know! I'm just trying to make sense of you!"

He swallowed hard and shook his head. If he pinched the bridge of his nose any tighter, he would have a bruise. "No, okay? She didn't propose to me. She said no the first time I asked and then I asked her again anyway. And like ten minutes later, we were married."

"Is it even _legal_?"

"Yes, it's legal," he said. "Her dad helped us arrange everything through a judge while we were in New York. He had all the paperwork we needed in his office and we got married on Sunday then went to the awards."

He could hear the wavering in the breath she blew out. "You asked her? Do you know… did you know how long I dreamed of you asking me and actually _wanting_ me like that? You could've just told me I wasn't what you wanted."

He felt like he might throw up. And just like that, there was a hand on his arm. He looked over and Rachel was sitting beside him. He felt the vise around his chest loosen a little and he could breathe again. He put his hand over hers and gripped her fingers tightly.

They didn't even need to exchange a look before she knew what was going on.

"I didn't…I didn't know, Q. It's not like I was stringing you along or anything. I mean…I…I just didn't understand, okay? I didn't get it. I didn't feel right about marrying you, so I didn't. It was that simple. It wasn't like…like I had a _plan_. I wasn't just with you 'cause I didn't have her."

"That's how it seems. That's what everyone is going to think. They probably already do, Finn. What has your mother said of it? I can hardly think she approves. And you always swore you wouldn't do anything that didn't make your mother proud. If you remember, that was your justification for turning down the higher-paid job at the private school."

"Right," he said. "Yeah, I remember. And whatever my mom said…well, that's between me and my mom."

"She hates it," Quinn said. "Rachel left you high and dry. Rachel isn't her favorite person, you know. Not quite the same as the devoted girlfriend who patiently waited for her boyfriend to settle down and make an honest woman out of her."

"Leave my mom out of it," he growled. His grip on Rachel tightened a little and she leaned her head on his shoulder. "Look…I just…when it came to Rachel I didn't feel like anything was holding me back. There was always something with you… like a hand on my chest or something. And I don't know why, I know I can't explain it, but I love her and I'm with her and I'm _going_ to be with her so I'm asking you to respect that."

He'd said that to this girl before. And he knew he could either keep saying it and she wouldn't listen—or he could just _stop_.

"And I'm sorry you're hurt or lonely or whatever, but…but I'm not sorry I'm happy with someone else and I'm not sorry I'm married to her and I'm really not even sorry for how you found out. You totally screwed me over, you lied to me and yes… I'm done. I would be done even if there weren't a Rachel, but there _is_ a Rachel and it's not even worth talking about it all anymore 'cause even if it's not, like, long enough in between the two, it's done and isn't really up for discussion."

"So then you'll understand if I don't impart my congratulations or best wishes to the happy couple," she said dryly.

"Yeah…'cause it wasn't about that. I'm not trying to, like, wave it in your face or anything."

He stopped just short of saying he didn't really care if she knew or if he talked to her again, but both those things were true. It wasn't that he wanted to…y'know…_brag_ about what he had now. He just didn't care. There was a vague wish somewhere inside him that she'd stop chasing what she thought looked good and would just go for what made her happy, but…but if she didn't then that was on her. Not him. It wasn't his responsibility any more.

And maybe that was the big difference. Rachel had never made him responsible for her happiness. She had simply made him a part of it all. He felt all the tension leave his body.

"Obviously. You're just _gone_," she whispered. "For what it's worth…I'll miss you. Wherever you are. I assume I'll see more of you in the press if what they say about Rachel's career is true."

"Maybe…" he acknowledged. "But I'm working on some stuff of my own, too."

"You are?" She asked. He knew this was a dangerous road. She sounded all sympathetic and caring and…he didn't know if she was using it for some other purpose or if she was really both of those things. He never really knew where he stood with her; she held her true feelings so close to herself. She wasn't like Rachel, who was actually crying on his shoulder (his shirt was wet) because she could hear his painful half of the long-overdue conversation.

"Yeah," he said. "And I live in London with Rachel now so…I dunno. You don't have to, like, worry about that awkward moment when we run into each other."

"I was kind of looking forward to that moment, actually," she said. She gave a small sniffle and something…there was something in her voice that made his blood run a little cold.

Was she just saying she was going to, like, crawl all over him? Or maybe it would be like that kiss clear back in high school. The one where he was still totally just raw from everything that had happened with Rachel and where she had a fucking boyfriend and…his jaw tightened.

"Just…what are you doing?" He stood up again and Rachel looked at him questioningly. He just…he couldn't be _nice_ anymore and it kind of felt wrong to be all mean with her crying next to him or crying for him—and yes, he knew that's what she was doing. She was expressing the way this phone call made him feel only how Rachel would express it.

"What do you mean, 'what am I doing'?" She said. Her voice was sweet. (Kind of like _acid_.)

"I mean, knock it the fuck off, Quinn. I'm not coming back. You can't _win_ me back. It's _over_."

"We'll see."

"No, we will _not see._ Fuck. I'm so tired of you not listening. This whole entire thing started because you don't listen."

"The whole entire thing started because I love you and I'm the best thing that ever happened to you."

"Except you're totally _not_," he said sharply. He could feel Rachel's wide-eyed stare on him and he knew he was pacing (more like making himself dizzy walking in circles 'cause the apartment was tiny.) He couldn't even look at Rachel right now. He knew she was going to be pissed when he got off the phone, but he just couldn't care. He needed to have this out and it was all so raw and he just couldn't be nice anymore.

If he hadn't seen the games Quinn was playing, he wouldn't have been with Rachel. If he hadn't been so miserable and felt so trapped before he wouldn't be so happy with feeling tied down now. It all fit together. It all made sense somehow, and the best part was he didn't have to force it.

He just had to force Quinn to _see_ it.

"Except all she ever did was place you second to her own ambition and need. She is certainly not the best thing that ever happened to you nor will she ever be. You're just too stupid to realize what everyone in your life already knows. She's going to leave you high and dry and at some point you're going to turn back to the people who have never let you down for support." She kept right on talking now that she had an opening. "I can guarantee, because I know you and I know your friends and your family, that none of them have called to offer their congratulations. Your mother is quite likely devastated, and I'm sure Kurt has thrown the voicemail bitch fit of the century. Burt hasn't said anything at all and he probably won't but that doesn't mean he's not _thinking _it and God. Can you imagine what Puck or anyone who knows you both will say? I'm sure _Katie_ filled your ear full of how bad of an idea it is to rebound this way. God only knows what other condemnation is waiting for you. Congratulations on disappointing everyone who knows or ever has known you."

"I…that's not…"

"Am I essentially wrong _at all_ about any of it?" She said a little breathlessly.

"All of it," he said sharply, even as he knew it was half-truth and half-lie.

"You're lying," she said flatly. "Don't call me when this fails like everything else you try that isn't _me._"

He just rolled his eyes and swallowed hard. "You're just… you're so full of crap. I'm over it. Have a nice life. Or don't. Whatever." He hung up and was so mad he tossed his phone to the floor and was still breathing hard when he looked over at Rachel.

All she really did was blink.

"Please say something," he begged. His throat was raw and his heart was pounding and his head hurt just a little. He needed her to just use her ability to say the exact right thing at the worst possible moment.

She stood up from the couch and dried her cheeks. She gave him a small smile, walked calmly to his phone and picked it up. She sniffled a little, tucked the phone into his hand and then stretched up on her toes to kiss his cheek.

"I could, but I think you need to call your mom."

"I-I..I just…" he shook his head.

"Trust me," she said. "Call your mom. I know you feel like you don't have the energy left to call her. Do it anyway. I'll wait in the other room."

"No…no, please don't go," he said hoarsely. He caught her hand up with his and looked at her. "Please."

"Okay," she said, tilting her head and guiding him to the couch at the same time. She waited until he sat down then folded herself up next to him. "I'm not saying a word to her, though."

He let out a deep breath and dialed the numbers he needed to place the international call. He found his head doing the math about the time difference and he realized it was just around dinnertime in Ohio because it was nearly eleven at night for him. While the call connected (it took a few minutes), he grabbed Rachel's hand and just tried to breathe. He also kind of wished he could get a good read on how she was handling things—mostly, if she was mad at the way he'd talked to Quinn.

"Hello?

It took him a second to shake off Burt's slightly gruff answer and to realize that Burt probably didn't recognize the number. Finn knew the few times Rachel had called from London, even though she'd been on her normal phone, the number had shown up differently.

"Hello…um, hey Burt." The other line went completely dead. "Is my mom around?"

"Yeah, she's here," he said. "Do I need to suggest you be on your best behavior or…"

"No," Finn replied easily. He was glad his mom had someone that protected her and took care of her like that, but seriously. He wasn't calling to piss her off more. That was _never_ why he was calling. "No, I'll be nice."

"Okay, well…I can't promise the same for her," Burt said easily. "Here she is."

"Finn?" Carole said a few seconds later. Her voice sounded a lot like it had in the message several days ago.

"Hi, mom," he said softly. "Is now an okay time to call?"

"Yes," she said. She sniffled a little. "Well, it's way better than the last two times you called while I was in the shower and while I was at work—both of which I knew were on purpose."

He knew Rachel had heard that through the phone because she squeezed his hand in protest or annoyance or…maybe both.

"Yeah well…I wasn't ready to talk to you yet but I didn't want you to think I died in a plane crash or something."

"Well thanks for that, I suppose," she said. "So you're ready to talk me now?"

"I need to talk to you now," he corrected gently. "I'm so sorry."

There was a very, very long pause. He looked over at Rachel uncertainly to make sure he, like, still existed or something. It was that long of a pause. It was the kind of pause that cost $4 on an international call, even with the changes he'd made to his calling plan.

"You got married. _Without your mother_," she said sharply. "Without your mother who loves you and sacrificed for you, not a mother that was indifferent to you for the better part of your life."

"No, I know what I did," he said. "It's like a _real_ apology. I'm sorry. Serious. I mean, I'm not sorry I got married and I'm _super_ not sorry I jumped on the chance to marry Rachel but…I'm sorry about the other stuff."

"Super not sorry?" She repeated. She sounded as amused as Rachel looked.

"Yes, mom," he agreed. He shook his head. "I mean, it was the first time ever that I've just done something for myself."

"Doing something for yourself is buying a jacket, not finding a wife."

"Maybe for Kurt," he said. Rachel dropped her jaw a little and swatted at his arm. "Ow! Rach, knock it off! You didn't even hear what she said!"

Carole couldn't really help herself and she laughed. "Okay, well my point is, Finn, I'm worried about you because you've changed your entire life in the last month. And yes, I'm hurt you didn't even think to _call _me."

"Everything happened so fast, Mom. You don't even know."

"You're right, I don't know," she said.

He remembered the 'get talking right now, Mister' voice from when he was in high school. It was better than 'I'm disappointed in you' or 'You suck so hard you get to take the garbage out for the next month' voice, though.

"You wanna know how it went down?" He said. Rachel leaned over and kissed his cheek. He heard her whisper something about changing her clothes before she left the room entirely.

"Of course I do."

He let out a huff of breath and leaned back on the couch. Worried was not the same as disappointed, Quinn. His mom was totally on board—or she would be. Quinn could eat shit for all he cared.

"Okay, well, I'm positive Kurt told you how I might've proposed before Rachel left a few weeks ago."

There was a long pause that, if he had to describe, he would say was slightly _guilty_. "He may have mentioned it."

"I have no doubt," Finn said. "Well, I _think_ she was kidding, but she said the next time I proposed she wanted me to be…well…less than dressed."

"Oh, Finn, you _didn't_."

He felt his neck and face turn red and he dropped his head and closed his eyes. "Sure did."

"You asked her to marry you while you were naked?"

"Well…we were sort of wearing…like… _each other_ at the time and it was em…emotional or something."

"You asked her to marry you during _sex_?" She asked.

He frowned. "Maybe."

"Maybe or actually?"

"Both."

"What did she say?"

"I think it's pretty obvious," he said. "But she said _yes_. Actually…she said it a few times."

"Finn!" She gasped. "Come _on_! That girl… she deserves and wants romance and flowers and champagne and…knowing her, probably lights. And pictures."

"Well…" he said. He gave an awkward shrug. "We kind of just decided whatever pictures we could get from the awards and the party would be our wedding pictures."

"When _exactly_ did you get married?"

"Well, we got into town on Thursday afternoon and decided on Friday that we wanted to get married while we were there. So we called her dads 'cause they know a guy who's a judge in the city and he owed them a favor or something…like, I mean I don't know how she knew that part, but he agreed to meet us at his chambers on Sunday and he had all the stuff we needed and he married us right there and then we took the limo thing from her agency to Radio City Music Hall."

She was quiet again for a long time and then she spoke. Her voice was still shaky. He still hated it. "So…you had a limo. The Tony's were your wedding reception. The press were your photographers. It sounds perfect for _her_, I guess. But what about _you_, Finn? Are you happy? I mean…it's been less than two months since you were teaching in a job you'd had for awhile and you were living with a girl who you'd been with for years and…this just all seems…"

"It seems like a lot, and a lot of big changes," he agreed. "But I'm _fine_. And I'm happy, I promise. She just…she has this _way_ where she, like, gives me whatever I need to just…I'm not afraid to change whatever I'm doing and try to find a new way to be happy. 'Cause I know now that I wasn't happy before, mom. Quinn could never make me this happy and it's just…that's just the way it is. It's not her fault and it's not my fault, it just…_is_. You know?"

"I know," Carole echoed quietly. "And you really trust Rachel isn't just going to…I don't know… get restless or bored or whatever it was before… again? Because you were devastated. We all knew it and although I love her and I know you two are happy together—it's just the rest that worries me, Finn. When she's not around or when she leaves, you're just kind of a train wreck."

"She's not leaving this time," he whispered. "She's just…she's not. I have to leave her here in a couple weeks though and it _sucks_."

"You'll be home in a couple of weeks?" She said. She sounded almost hopeful.

"Yeah…I'm doing this band contest thing. I'll link you to all the crap for it so you can come down if you want, okay?" He said. "I'll be there. She won't be. She has to stay here and work. But…but there's something else you want to know about. I promise you want to know."

"Okay, go ahead."

"Whenever it is we move back…like maybe around Christmas or whenever…the trade-off for calling in favors with her dads was that we let them throw us a wedding party or reception or whatever you want to call it. So I'm _sure_ they want you to help them get it all set up whenever it happens. And y'know…obviously, like… _be there_."

"That would be good," she agreed. "But I'm still probably going to hold it over your head for a while that you didn't at least _call_ me, Finn. I mean…I have serious reservations with how fast this is all going but…but you're an adult and you didn't ask for my opinion and so…whatever my opinion is, I'll keep it to myself as long as you swear you're happy."

"I _swear_. I'm _so_ happy, Mom. Like… really, really… is there something better than happy?"

"Sometimes I think so," she said. She let out a long breath. "I, um…I do have one other thing to tell you if you want."

"Okay," he said, hesitating a little on the word because she had _just_ said she was waiting for another shoe to drop on him.

"I saved my engagement ring from your father. I thought you might…well, I thought you might want to give it to whoever you married. I never thought it was right for Quinn; it's just not _modern_ enough for her but…but Rachel might love it because she's into keepsakes more than jewelry itself."

He smiled a little into his phone and looked over toward the door to make sure Rachel wasn't around. He knew if Carole gave that to her, or if he did, it would be better as a surprise. He couldn't remember what the ring looked like, either. He wasn't sure if Rachel would like the ring itself, but his mom was right in that she would like what it _meant_. She was all into symbols like that.

"Well, sure. I'll look at it when I'm back, okay? I think you're right she would like it, but…well, we have wedding bands at least so that's _something_ I did right."

"_You_ have a wedding ring?"

"Of course I do, Mom," he scoffed. "I mean…she was kinda into the idea that it matches hers, so…"

"I have never seen you wear jewelry of any kind," she said gently. "That's the only reason I was surprised."

"Yeah…it's not much. I mean, neither of them are. But mine is just really plain and hers is just kinda perfect and she keeps saying she doesn't want an engagement ring since we didn't really have an engagement or anything but…well…I mean, I was kinda glad. I don't have that much money left in savings and I know I'm gonna have to buy at least one more plane ticket. Turns out those are kind of ridiculous."

She laughed. "Yes, they are. Especially when you're flying all over the world. And especially when you fly out there on a moment's notice."

"I'm just glad I already had a passport. That sucky trip to Mexico was good for _something_," he muttered. He and Quinn had taken a trip to Mexico that just…well… the _only_ good thing that resulted from that trip was the tattoo wasn't permanent and he had a passport when he wanted to go to London for Rachel two years later. "That was the worst vacation _ever_."

"You know, Kurt just mentioned the other day how you still owe him something for him picking you up from O'Hare three days early and letting you crash at his apartment while you tried to find a flight home."

"Let's not talk about it. Like…_ever_," he said. His words were sharp but his voice was not. "Are we… are we okay, though? I mean, really? 'Cause I just um…"

"We're okay, Finn. I'm disappointed, but it seems like you'll be able to make it up to me. And for whatever it's worth, I hope this will be okay. I'm proud that you're the kind of man who can go after what he wants with everything and just leap. You're more fearless than I am and… even if I wish you had called me and at least _let me know_what was going on with you…well, it sounds like you two did what was right for you. If there's anything I've ever learned repeatedly, it's that life is too short not to express your true feelings for someone whenever you have the chance."

He smiled. "Thank you, Mom." He cleared his throat. "I…um…I don't say it much. But I love you. I really care what you think. It's pretty important to me that you're not crying about me on voicemail or anything. So I'm…I'm glad we talked."

"Me, too. I love you."

"Yeah," he said. "Okay, well…I think Rachel might've fallen asleep on me and she just barely got home from work and…and you should come visit us, okay? Like maybe in the fall or whatever. We should plan a trip out so you can see Rachel's play and see where we live and..."

She breathed out. "Okay, Finn. I'll start working on my passport and we'll talk about it more in a few weeks, okay?"

"Yeah, that's good," he said.

"Give Rachel our love."

"I will."

"And by that, I mean strictly tell her that we love her. I don't want to know about the rest of it."

"Done," he said. He was totally going to ignore what she wasn't actually saying. "Good night, Mom."

"Good night," she echoed. He hung up but instead of going into the bedroom immediately, he sat back on the couch and took a second to breathe.

There were really, like, _three_ women in his life who had known him. Two of the three had given him everything he needed. His mother was not totally disappointed and heartbroken as Quinn had believed and had tried to guilt him into believing. Rachel was not going to leave; she'd already proven that because they were married—for _real_; actual forever-or-til-death-do-you-part-whichever-came-first married. They were tied together forever. That was all he needed. He needed his mom to be proud of him and to keep on loving him like she always had. He needed Rachel to just stay with him and be herself and let him be himself.

He sure as hell didn't need Quinn planting doubt or hurt or any of the other kinds of, like…uneasiness. He didn't need her telling him how his mom felt or what Rachel was going to do because she didn't really know them, not like he did, and she never really would. She was just wrong. More than that, she was just wrong _for him_ because she sure as hell didn't _know_ him. She just wanted him to be a perfect placeholder in her life.

It had just taken a giant push and about ten seconds for him to see that his place was somewhere different; and instead of just holding still, he was moving, breathing, living, loving and changing as he went. And it felt better than he'd ever felt before.

He was _alive_. Turned out that made all the difference. He was done just waiting for his life to start. He was making it happen, and he was so excited all the time. He was excited to live his life. He was excited to go back to Ohio now that he was this new, happy guy. He was excited to leave Ohio again. For so long, he'd thought of getting married as being trapped and tied down and all kinds of negative things. But now? Now he felt like he was free and he could breathe and he could go wherever or do whatever.

And all he needed was Rachel down the hall or by his side, and his mom in his ear (she was always kind of in his head) telling him he could do it. He most definitely didn't need Quinn there telling him what he _should_ do or what he _couldn't_ do. She wasn't the one who knew him. Or really, she wasn't one of the ones who knew him.

He wanted to call her back and say that—tell her to let go because she was holding on too tightly to something she'd never really had or understood in the first place. But as he breathed out one last time and got up off the couch, he shrugged off the urge to call her because it just didn't matter. Even if she was waiting on him, he didn't care because he wasn't going back.

He was going forward—and there was something way better waiting for him.

(Even if she was asleep on top of the covers, half in her work clothes and half in her pajamas.)


	5. Five:  No Rhyme and No Reason

**A/N: ** This is faster than I planned to update because I'm doing more editing than writing today and I hate not having any chapters banked (if you haven't already, go read **Guarding the Heart **by **Wood-U-Like-2-No**) but then the right people asked me and here we are. This is for **lunafishy** (your feedback is amazing; it's been fun talking to you!) and **Lizzie **(**Paceismyhero**) who wanted something Finchel-y after last night's ep that I still haven't watched so she won't necessarily tell me why she wants something like that. But whatever, here it is. And this is about as Finchel as it gets, even if it's in this separate 'verse I have going. **Thank you so much to each and every one of you though for the constructive feedback, the love, the reviews, the reblogs and the likes**. You are all awesome and I'm having fun with this story.

**Disclaimer:** I don't own Glee. I also don't own the songs used and they are **Longview **by **Green Day** and **Ache For You **by **Ben Lee**. If you have never listened to the latter, I recommend it and he will probably (definitely) appear again in this story and some of my other stuff. So.

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><p><strong>Chapter Five: No Rhyme and No Reason<strong>

Rachel sighed as she dropped the notebook back down when Matt waved through for them to stop. Her throat was starting to hurt (since she was the only qualified singer in the room so she'd been at it constantly for the last two days) and he kept making all these _tiny_ changes. If he was this much of a micromanager now, she was dreading the audition process. As he started rambling something about changing the word 'she' in the song to a 'her' (it didn't make sense that way), she felt her phone in the pocket of her cardigan.

She pulled it out and, keeping it under the table, saw the text from Finn. She furrowed her brow a little, wondering what he could be texting her about. She knew he was super bored at home alone; she felt really bad about it, honestly. There was just nothing she could do about it.

She looked up, offering Matt a nod, and then set her notebook on the table. Whatever notes he gave her would be different on the next run-through anyway. Plus they still had a lot of dialogue to get through before the next run-through. Basically this whole day was pointless.

_I'm so damn bored I'm going blind._

She had to fight the urge to laugh out loud. Was he texting her song lyrics? She was reasonably sure it was—and Cooper's roommate in college had followed Green Day with an unnatural level of devotion, so she had a strong inkling it was from them—but just to be safe, she replied with a vague "me too 3".

She pretended to follow Matt's prattling for a few minutes before her phone buzzed again.

_Sit around and watch the phone but no one's calling. Call me pathetic, call me what you will._

This time, she _did_ laugh out loud and it drew an amused glance from Thomas, an annoyed one from Bridget, and a rather pissy raised eyebrow from Matt.

"I'm sorry, are we…keeping you from something pressing?" He asked. He leaned back in his chair and pressed his fingertips together. He also pressed his lips together, which she knew from experience in the past was not a good thing.

She shook her head. "No, but…I just…can I please text Finn back?"

"Explain how this is work-related first," Bridget said icily, tapping the eraser of her pencil on the table as she, too, arched an eyebrow.

"Explain to me how you're my boss or that's _any_ of your business," Rachel bounced right back.

Matt just sighed. It was no large secret he hated the tension between the two girls. "I suppose lunch is due," he agreed. "This is as good a place to stop as any."

She nodded a little and figured a small concession was in order. "Do you want that sandwich from up the street?" She asked him, looking up from her phone for just a split second.

He didn't even crack a smile. "Thank you but no," he dismissed and she just shrugged it off to pick up her phone and reply.

_When masturbation's lost its fun…_

There was no way the text had been on his phone more than thirty seconds before her phone rang.

"Are you even kidding me?" He said, bypassing the usual greeting.

"What?" She said, her voice a little too squeaky for her liking. She couldn't fight the smile.

"Who sings that song?"

"Green Day," she answered automatically. "Why would it shock you I know that?"

He let out a little laugh. "Well, because you've never listened to that kinda stuff."

"That's correct. Punk is usually not my thing, but they _do_ have the Broadway show as you very well know and…"

"…and how else?" He asked. "I mean…you just…you _know_ everything. And I'm totally going to play stump the wife now."

Her laugh was almost disbelieving. "That's an actual game?"

"I dunno. Never had a wife to stump before."

"Finn!" She burst out. "Okay, well…Green Day is not the way to do it. One of Cooper's roommates in college made sure I was well-versed."

"Was it a makeout playlist or something?"

"Ew. _No_."

"Just checking."

"What kind of makeout playlist did _you _have?" She asked. She bit her lip. She wasn't sure she wanted to know what kinds of jams frat boys used if they actually wanted to get a girl in bed for more than five minutes. While it was true he wasn't exactly a frat boy anymore (though Cooper had been known to utter the phrase 'once a frat boy _always_ a frat boy'), it didn't mean she wanted to know what he _used_ to do.

"Maybe that's what I'll start texting you first to stump you," he said. Her phone buzzed against her ear.

"Did you just text me?" She asked with another laugh.

"Maybe."

"_How_?" She demanded.

"Magic," he said simply. "Well…anyway, I'm trying to decide if I should just wait to talk to Kurt 'til I see him on the fourth or if I should call him now."

"Wow…you really _are_ bored," she said. She used the fingers that weren't pressing the phone to her ear to toy with the corner of the pages on the notepad. She was also ignoring the fact his Kurt-comment had come out of nowhere. She was getting used to non-sequitors with Finn around again and the way he could knock her off-balance in a simple conversation was starting to get more expected as days went by.

"He was a dick," Finn said shortly. "Especially to you. It doesn't…I'm kind of mad at him for that at least."

"He's just hurt," she said. She knew she was repeating his consoling from days previous, but she had to believe the situation would blow over. She was just trying to figure out how to give it a push that direction.

"Well, it's annoying he has this double standard. I called my mom this morning 'cause she's meeting me at the airport and she said something about him maybe moving in with Sa-someone. Like—hello...he doesn't have a lot of room to talk about us moving fast if that's the case." He closed his eyes as he stammered; at least he'd remembered he wasn't supposed to say anything before he was totally done getting the name out.

"Don't you think maybe you should talk to _him_ about this? He won't really speak to me now, I imagine. I haven't had time to call him anyway. Besides, I think his issue isn't that we're moving fast so much as it is that we didn't bring him along," she said.

He sighed. "Well…you would know better than me 'cause you and Kurt are like…what was it you said… halves? I'm not sure how cool I am with you halving my brother and all."

She laughed again. "Yeah, well deal with it."

There was a long stretch of silence between them; she wished she were there with him because normally when they were quiet they were doing something else (mostly kissing but sometimes sleeping). It wasn't awkward, though. At least not until he spoke.

"You can still ride with me to the airport tomorrow, right?" He asked quietly.

She picked up the pen she'd been using for notes and started doodling on the page in front of her.

"Yeah," she said. "I still don't want you to go."

"I'm glad you're not sick of me yet," he replied, his voice just as low as hers.

"No, I'm not sick of you," she said. When she looked down at the page, it was her signature with his last name on it and it kind of felt like she was that thirteen year old girl with a crush on a movie star who would sign variations of her name with her crush's name. "I might be sick of myself."

He sputtered out a laugh. "What does that even mean?"

She sighed and looked at her name—because it was really her name now or would soon enough be—again. "I wish I could just be happy the contest is going so well for you guys but…but I'm more selfish than that."

There was a long pause. "You're not happy?"

She tapped the pen twice on her paper and then set it down. "It's not that simple, I'm afraid." She let out another long breath. "But we can chat about that later because I have to go finish some instrumentation on the first track."

He didn't believe her. She knew by his silence and certainly knew by his voice. "Rachel…" he started.

"I'll…um… we'll definitely talk in a little while. I should be home for dinner."

"Whatever," he mumbled.

"Finn…"

"No, you have to go," he said firmly. "So go. We'll do this later."

She bit her lip and bit back tears. She'd lost control of the conversation _so _fast. She wasn't entirely exaggerating; she did have work to do and she figured she'd better just skip lunch and get to it so she could go home and do whatever they needed to do to resolve it before he left.

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><p>She didn't make it home early <em>at all<em>. There had been disagreements with Matt on how some of the instrumentation should go, and then there had been trying to tweak it so the midi file played properly, and further issues getting the sheet music for each part printed. They were now officially halfway through with the arrangements through the first cast-involved musical number, though. She just wished that felt like an accomplishment. Instead, it felt like she'd been hiding in her work. There had been relationships (if that's what one would call them) and times when that felt justified. Tonight it just felt lonely.

He was _leaving_. Like he was really going tomorrow. He would be 3,800 miles away. She wasn't sure she could compete with 3,800 miles and an entire ocean. She wasn't sure why this felt so much more permanent to her than it had before. She should be happy and relieved and everything else. But instead, it was like being married had just made the distance multiply. She didn't think she was enough—interesting enough or loving enough or maybe even trusting enough—to bridge it. It had been a really, really long time since she'd doubted herself in quite this way.

Maybe she should let him just think she wasn't happy. It was kind of the truth. It wasn't _him_ she was unhappy with. It was the arrangement. The arrangement and the timing was just terrible, as usual.

She slipped her shoes off just inside the front door so they didn't click on the hard wood floor and because it was really late and it seemed like the noise would just be too much for her to handle. She took a deep breath and ran her hands over her face. As she moved down the hallway, she could see the pile of boxes in the living room and she sighed. He'd at least tried to move them out of the way, she was sure, but there was just no space. And now he was leaving so it didn't matter if his things found a place in their apartment because the most important thing wouldn't be there at all.

She supposed it could be said she was a little fatalistic.

He was asleep in the bedroom and his open suitcase was on the floor on his side of the bed, still mostly empty. She sighed. He hadn't even packed yet? They had to leave for the airport in just over six hours. She'd known they were very different, just as people and in general, but it was like seeing the difference in black and white. Or black and grey; it was dark.

She slid her skirt off first and folded it before putting it on the chair in the corner, then did the same with her shirt. Her movement was virtually silent and she slipped under the covers in just the thin camisole tanktop she'd worn all day and her underwear. He rolled over and slid a hand between her shirt and her stomach, murmuring something sleep-heavy and unintelligible against the back of her head and her entire body tensed (not in the good way.) Even though he had been dead asleep, or so she'd thought, it didn't take that long for him to notice.

"Rach?" He asked, sounding more worried and less sleepy. His arm tightened, pulling her against him even more.

"Mmm," she agreed. "Go to sleep."

"Just talk to me," he said simply. She was resisting being against him now, trying to get away by pushing her butt into his hips, but he was still holding on.

She sighed. "You haven't even packed yet, Finn? Are you serious with that? It's just going to take longer to get out of here in the morning." She blinked and took in a sharp breath. "I mean…do you just leave _everything_ for the last possible second?"

He let her go and rolled over onto his back. "What are you doing?"

"I saw your suitcase. I'm not blind or an idiot. It _should_ be packed and sitting by the door."

"I'm not talking about my bag," he said. His hands came up and his fingers ran through his hair.

"I just…I couldn't just leave work."

"You don't think, maybe just this once, coming home might've been more important?" He rolled over onto his side to face away from her. "Just…whatever, Rachel. I don't get what you're doing but this is going to get worse the more you talk so…whatever. Good night. Glad you're not dead in an alley somewhere."

They laid like that for the rest of the night, neither sleeping but neither talking either. They technically sat next to each other on the train, but Finn's mind was a million miles away and Rachel, though in the present, didn't want to talk either. It was the longest hour of her life, really, riding to Heathrow with him. In spite of her doubt about his ability to pull it together, they had gotten out of the house in time for the earlier train than the one they absolutely needed and so there was a good half-hour extra for her to sit with him before her return trip, and nearly two hours until he needed to board.

To sit there next to each other and not say anything. And then be apart for however long.

Finn couldn't take it anymore. He looked over at her, her head bowed and messing around with her phone. He took a deep breath, tapped into a reserve of patience he didn't even know he had, and then reached out rest his hand on her wrist, keeping his touch light instead of pulling her hand away from her phone entirely.

"Could you just stop for a minute and talk to me? _Please_?"

She looked at him—really looked at him—and she knew instantly why it had been a bad idea. She was totally going to cry. She was mad, she was embarrassed, and she was just heartsick. None of it was his fault; he was the same sweet and confused guy as always, and that's exactly how he looked. He had done nothing to deserve any of this.

She let in a shaky breath that wobbled more the deeper it got. "Finn, I…" She shook her head and then looked down again and he felt any of the ground he'd gained slip away. It was the first time in a really, really long time he had no idea what she was thinking. It seemed like he knew her even when they weren't together. But he didn't know what this was. He reached out and squeezed her shoulder, but he felt a cold fear wash through him.

What if she wasn't handling him leaving? Well, obviously she wasn't handling it. But what if she didn't want to? What if all this had been just, like, totally impulsive and now that they were back to real life, she didn't want it? The girl wasn't known for settling down, after all.

What if she wanted a divorce? Or she didn't want him to come back? What if Quinn had been right and Rachel was already running away? Not like _literally_ running 'cause he knew where she'd be, but still. Running wasn't just running. It was _running_. He had not gotten enough sleep for this.

"C'mon…" he said, his voice cracking on the word. "Just…just _talk _to me. Talking has to be way better, right?" His words held courage he didn't feel. He _loved_ her. Like really, really for-real loved her. He loved being married to her. And he had loved kind of thinking he might be able to actually have it both ways—chase a dream even though he already had the girl. Maybe that was his mistake.

Then again, she launched herself at him and landed in his lap with enough force he tipped back in the tiny airport chair. It wasn't actually comforting though because he could feel her whole body shaking as she buried her face in his neck.

He rubbed at her back and kissed the back of her head.

"You're scaring me," he whispered. "Like… _a lot_."

She sniffled and took a big breath but she didn't move at all. "What if you forget me? What…what if everything is so good you never want to come back?"

"Rachel…" he protested. "Of course I'm gonna want to come back."

"You don't know that," she said. She rocked back a little, separating from him and wiping furiously at her eyes.

"You guys are gonna do great and your band is gonna be great and…and…I'm just me and I can't…there's all this other stuff and…and…"

"Hey, hey, hey, _hey_…." He said. "I'm not going to forget you and I'm not going to just…just not come back to you. You know I don't really have a choice here 'cause it's just something I have to see through. It's something I _want_ to see through." She just nodded and sniffled and didn't feel any better.

He looked at the clock on the wall and sighed. "You're gonna miss your train. And I don't think there was another one for a few hours so…"

"I have to go. You have to go. Can we stop?" She asked sadly. He leaned forward the inches required to give her a sweet kiss.

"Nope," he said. "I don't really want to. Do you?"

She just shook her head. She allowed herself a deep breath before she braced her hands on his shoulders and climbed out of his lap. She smoothed her pants out and watched him secure his carry-on bag over his shoulder so he could go through security now that she was leaving. He leaned down to give her one more kiss and then pulled her against him for a quick hug and then he was going one way and she was going the other.

She lasted until the train ride was almost half over before she sent him a frantic text message full of all the words she forgot to say, hoping she could get it to him before he boarded and had to turn his phone off.

_I'm so so so sorry. I love you. I miss you. I'll be waiting for you to call when you land. I love you. I'm so sorry._

He'd known since they started the whole texting song lyrics game the day before (or Stump the Wife, as he liked to call it) he wanted to send her something before his plane took off, but it wasn't until they had survived their… fight? Was it even a fight really? Maybe it was more just her not handling him going away very well. Truth be told, he wasn't sure how he would handle it if he hadn't been up all night worrying about her anyway. For now he was just exhausted. But regardless of what it was, all of it had helped him figure out some lyrics to send her. They were true now more than ever.

_There's no rhyme and there's no reason__. Y__ou're the secret in the back of my skull__. __There's no logic, so please believe me…__O__ur love's confusing, but it never gets dull._

He couldn't have said it better himself. He wasn't much with words but Ben Lee….he got it. Stump the Wife was way better—more effective—because he could use someone else's words, right from the bottom of his own heart.

He kind of wondered when he would be able to start using his own, though, and there were possibilities floating through his head on melody lines as he fell asleep before the long flight.


	6. Six: Same Boat, Different Paddle

**A/N: **Thanks to many who supported the writing of this thing I have no experience with. Thanks also to everyone who is reading and reviewing. You guys are awesome. The lyrics Rachel texts to Finn are from the fantastic **MFEO (Pt 1. Made for Each Other/ Pt. 2 You Can Breathe) **by **Jack's Mannequin** from **Everything in Transit**, which has to be one of my top ten albums of all time. The song Finn sings is, again (sorry) **Ache For You **by **Ben Lee**.

**Disclaimer: **I don't own Glee. Fox and Ryan Murphy do. And by-and-large, they can have it. I just want to borrow some pieces now and again. No real infringement is intended and I don't make money from this but man, can you imagine what that would be like?

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter Six : Same Boat, Different Paddle<strong>

"You should just call her," Carole said. They were sitting on the couch in the basement. Their goal had been to watch a movie, mother-son bonding, etc. but they hadn't even bothered turning on the television. Finn had to admit, taking the weekend to unwind (unclench was more like it) was a good idea before he started in on the ridiculous practice schedule Brandon had invented. He kinda wondered if the guy had taken Rachel's work schedule and used it as some kind of model.

He let out a little laugh. "Mom, it's like three in the morning there."

"I can tell you're thinking about her."

"Of course I am," he sighed. "I haven't talked to her in two days except texting song lyrics. It's weird."

"So call her."

"I'm not going to call her," he said, this time with another laugh. "She's busy, like, trying to run herself into the ground. I'm about to start doing the same thing. Why am I here again?"

"Your questions haven't gotten any easier now that you're an adult," Carole said. She pulled her legs up onto the couch as his eyes slipped closed. They had talked over tea—he had been living in the UK for a month, after all—and were still talking even though the tea had run out. Quinn, among other people, had told him he was a mama's boy and told him he needed to rely on his girlfriend more than his mother at some point. He just hadn't found that point yet, okay?

"Tell me about it," he groaned. "Like…she picked this huge fight before I left. And I had to figure out what the real problem was. Do you even know how long that took? She is not easy."

Carole's laugh was loud. "No," she said. "But you're happier."

"Yeah," he agreed. "I can't…it still freaks me out that we're married you know? It all happened fast."

"Oh, that reminds me…" she said. She patted at his leg as she stood up. "Be right back."

He scowled a little as he watched her go. He pulled his phone out of his pocket even though he knew she hadn't called. Hadn't he _just_ told his mom it was like three in the morning in London? Just because he wanted to talk to her didn't mean he was going to interrupt her sleeping or something important. They had a schedule and they were actually gonna try a video chat tomorrow that he hoped worked 'cause he was getting a little desperate to see her. He wasn't sure what Josh and Katie's internet was like, really, and that's where he was staying while they did insane band rehearsals. He hadn't had a chance to get an aircard yet, either. He wasn't sure the wireless store would even be open when Brandon was done tomorrow; and he was supposed to be to the place by like nine so they could start.

Nervous was an understatement for it all, honestly. Like—he wondered if because so much of his life had changed overnight if maybe it had changed his ability to drum or something crazy. He hadn't gone this long without sitting at a kit since the summer after Rachel had left. He'd definitely been rusty when he went back for senior year of high school; he shuddered a little and realized thinking of all that wasn't helping his nerves _at all_.

It was getting a little late, just after ten, and he was still getting used to the time difference. It was like he'd had just enough time to fast-forward before he'd come back and had to start the whole process over. He was very, very tired. He let his eyes drift closed and he heard his mom coming down the stairs again at the same time his phone buzzed on his thigh.

He frowned. It was a short buzz, which meant a new message as opposed to Brandon calling _again_ to tell him what time rehearsal started. (Nine had been the absolute earliest Finn was willing to agree to, given that he was crashing at his parents' house and would have to drive to Columbus in the morning.)

_You cannot forget. Skin new, hands true, my hands on you. So what's another night?_

He sat up a little bit as he read the words and realized it was more song lyrics from Rachel. It was vaguely familiar, like maybe they'd done something with the song in the band…he stared at the lyrics, trying to place them and trying to forget her hands on him because it had already been too long. They had stayed up late—almost all night, really—the night before the night before he left. The reminder that he couldn't forget her hands on him made it true. He shifted a little in his seat again.

His mind was instantly crowded with flashes of skin, warm words and breath in his ear, and…

"Are you okay?" His mom asked.

He looked over at her, distracted. "Oh, um…" He shook his head. "Yeah." She looked at him strangely.

"Okay, well here." She handed over a small velvet pouch, pulled closed with a ribbon on either side.

He reached out and took it, but didn't open it and continued to look at her as she sat down beside him again on the couch. "What is this?"

"My ring?" She asked. "The one your dad gave me?"

"Oh!" He said. He nodded and set his phone down so he could use both hands to dump the ring from the pouch into his palm. He would have to text Rachel back in a second. _But what in the world was she doing awake? _ He sighed when he thought of that.

"You don't like it?" His mom asked, misreading his reaction.

"No, I just got a text from Rachel," he said. "I was kinda worrying about why she's awake." He turned the simple band so he could get a better look at it, even though he vaguely remembered his mom actually still wearing it when he was a kid. It was a silvery band with a row of shiny diamonds set down in it and then a small, round diamond right in the middle of the row and raised up on prongs. It totally didn't look like anything Rachel would've chosen for herself, but he really had no doubt she would wear it on occasion. He kind of wished he had chosen her wedding band to match, but…well.

"What does her ring look like?" She asked, watching him look at the ring she'd handed him. "I'm not sure I've even asked."

He gave her a little half-smile. "Well, I'm gonna call her in a minute and I'll tell her to send you a picture 'cause she'll be all over that. But it's the same as mine, like it's not plain silver or gold, only the metal part is Xs and Os, and the Os have diamonds in them. Like _tiny_ diamonds."

She nodded. "It sounds perfect for her, Finn."

He rolled his head along the back of the couch cushion where he rested it. "Yeah, it really is." He sighed. "I miss her already, mom. I feel like I'm totally co-dependent on her or something." He licked his lips and looked away from his mom. "What does it say about me if I lived with someone for three years and I don't notice not seeing her every day but I get antsy like an hour after Rachel leaves for work?"

Carole sat back against the couch, sinking into the cushions and having posture a lot like Finn's. "Well…the two situations and relationships are totally separate, aren't they?"

He kinda shook his head. "I don't really think they are. I mean… it seems like they've always been somehow related."

There was a long pause. "What do you mean?" She finally asked, her voice totally neutral.

He swallowed hard. "Well, even from the start. I was dating Quinn and wanted Rachel. Then the baby wasn't mine and I dated Rachel off and on for a while but then that went south and I went back to Quinn like that was a way to figure out what went wrong with Rachel." He licked his lips again because they were really, really dry and his whole mouth was and maybe he didn't actually want to tell his mom all this stuff. But he kind of already started, so he had to keep going. "So then I just kept dating Quinn but…but I cheated on her with Rachel." His mom's gasp was enough to stop him even though he didn't want to, like, _focus_ on when he was a total dirtbag and he was so messed up he couldn't even tell anyone what a dirtbag he was for approximately a decade. "I know."

"When was _that_?"

"When Rachel left," he said quietly. He bit his lip and looked over at her. "She left me a note and…and it just kinda made me sick. I couldn't let it be 'it', so I went over to her house the night before she went to the airport." He swallowed thickly. "Then I didn't tell anyone…at least, not 'til she came back a couple months ago."

"Is that why…" The look she gave him was equal parts concern and confusion.

"Yes, that's why I spent the whole summer with my iPod on ignoring everyone," he looked over at her and flashed a bit of a smile with a short breath. He looked down at the ring he still held pinched in his fingers. "I just…I loved her so much even then that it actually hurt and I thought the only way we could be together was if I went to school in New York. So I started trying to get in, but I didn't want to tell anyone in case it didn't work out. So I worked all the time and paid all the application fees myself, and I didn't say a word about those schools when you guys asked later and…I looked at her note all the time and I remembered and…it was not awesome. It was all really, really hard. I think I went a little nuts, honestly."

"So what happened with school in New York?"

He shrugged. "I got into one, into the City University but I couldn't come up with anywhere to live that I could afford."

"You never even asked. We would've helped you."

"I know but…but I couldn't admit failure. I got the music scholarship to OSU and it just all fell together better. Plus, Rachel kinda just stopped texting or emailing or anything really by like Thanksgiving of our senior year so I thought maybe she had just moved on or something."

"Oh honey…" she shook her head and her voice was a little sad. "But you know better now? Or what… I don't want to pry. You're an adult."

He found himself leaning toward her a little more. He didn't quite put his head in her lap like I used to when he was a kid (or a couple times later than that) or even on her shoulder. But he was probably close enough he could have. Even though he was pushing thirty, he knew his mom would always be one of his favorite people. There were only a couple people he could totally be himself around, and she was definitely one of them.

"Yeah, I know better now. She was so messed up, Mom. And she hated it out there really bad. She stopped talking to us because she was totally miserable and she said hearing about us getting ready for glee competitions was the worst. So she stopped talking. I mean, really…if I would've known what I know now, I probably would've pushed it about CUNY a little more. I could've been with her this whole time."

"Do you _really_ think it would've worked the same, though? The timing still seems sort of off if I'm being honest."

He let out a long breath and his head _did_ fall to her shoulder. He felt like a little boy again. Not a man talking about his _marriage_. "I know. I kinda…I kinda took everything in my life apart, didn't I?"

"Yes," she said. "I should probably be worried but we're far past the point where you make your own decisions and I don't feel as though I can say anything."

"Say whatever you want," he said. "It matters what you think." He tilted his head a little but it's not like he could see her face. "What...um…are you disappointed I broke up with Quinn? Do you wish I would've married her or stayed closer to home?"

"Of course I wish you were closer to home, but it's not like you came home much once you and Quinn started living together. I don't know _why_ exactly you and Quinn broke up in the first place, I just know you came home with a bigger bag than normal for family brunch." She gave a little laugh. "Then Kurt gave you a condom at breakfast and told you that's the most important thing to carry on your person when you're single."

"He's _such_ a jerk," Finn agreed over his mom's laughter. "We broke up because she lied to me, she's the one who even gave Rachel's song to the record company in the first place, and then she told Rachel I'd never go anywhere or be any more than _her_ husband. She told Rachel to give up on me and Rachel did."

"You _really_ think Rachel gave up on you?" She asked after a long pause.

"I don't think that _now_."

"Honestly, though? Those don't seem like very good reasons to break up with someone who you'd been with that long, unless there was more to it. You probably owed it to her to let her at least explain."

"I did, Mom. We talked and…and she was just, like… cold. She was kind of snotty about it, like she had the right to make choices for me and not even tell me. Now that I'm not in the situation, I know she just pushed me around. She didn't let me pick anything for myself _ever_. And I'm really better off choosing sometimes. I can make good choices."

"So you're blaming Quinn for making you stay somewhere you weren't happy?"

"I'm not blaming her for anything and it's not like…I wasn't that unhappy when I was there. But now that I'm not there I see everything that was wrong and I'm not…this way is so much better." His phone buzzed again, where it had fallen out of his lap between his thigh and the couch. He jumped a little.

"Rachel is good for you in some ways," she admitted. "In a lot of ways, actually, and I know you love her. She supports you and encourages you to step outside your comfort zone and be more fearless and I think it's good for you."

"I think it's good, too. Plus I think I help slow her down and if she doesn't slow down at some point she's just…she'll just be like _gone_. I need her to not be gone." He sighed. "It's totally lame, but I miss her. Like really, really miss her."

Carole leaned over and kissed the top of his head. "You're not lame. There's nothing wrong with loving your wife. But since it's about the fourth time you've said that…I think you need to go call her and I really don't want to listen."

He chuckled a little before he replaced the ring in the bag and sighed. "Yeah. Probably not," he said. He started to sit up. "D'you think we should give this to her together the next time she's in town or when you come out? 'Cause I think we should do it like that. Or would that be weird?"

"Well…it's not like you're proposing to her." She took a little swat at him. "Maybe it _should_ be like that since she didn't get a real proposal anyway."

He ducked away from her and laughed. "Hey! It was _real_. It was…"

"Stop," Carole said simply. She took the bag from his hand. "It was _private_. Let's just leave it at that. Please."

He smiled wide. "C'mon, mom. It's not like you think I've never had sex before."

"I know, and I should've never actually come to visit my son at the frat house unannounced," she said as she stood up. "Lesson learned painfully."

"I'm still really sorry about that," he said in a quick, slightly embarrassed whisper. The worst part had been that the brother who answered the door knew exactly what Finn and his … dance tutor… were doing. Telling the mom Finn was just studying and "go right on in"? Well. It had demanded payback for sure; that would be all he'd ever actually admit to.

"Eh. The only way it would be worse is if I walked in on you and Rachel now. It isn't the end of the world if it was a random I never have to see again." She blew him a kiss from the doorway. " 'Night Finn. Thanks for spending some time with your lame old mom."

"You've never been lame," he said, leaning his head back on the couch so he could see her more clearly, even if it was sort of upside down. "G'night." He really fought the urge to express his confusion and maybe even distaste for hearing his mother use the term _random_. He kind of shuddered at the thought once she was gone.

He somehow pushed himself off the couch, opened the text message on his phone, then walked toward his (old) bedroom and read. He caught the lights on the way out and didn't bother turning on the ones in his room.

_If you're still up I think you should call me. (:_

He smiled a little. It made him less worried because she'd put the smiley face on there, actually. It sounded more like her than the song lyrics had. He stripped down all the way to his boxers before he climbed into bed. Once he was settled, he started dialing all the international codes and stuff and…he kind of hated that it took that long of a string of numbers to call her. They'd set up some sort of weird and complicated deal to try and keep the charges for their phone calls down, but Rachel had assured him that part of her package deal with Matt was that he covered a portion of her calls home. Her agency had negotiated it that way before she ever even left, claiming that her success rested on a support system she'd built four thousand miles away. He was glad. He'd never actually met Laney, but he thought he might hug the woman when he finally did 'cause she was awesome to his wife.

The call finally, finally connected and his mind went blank of all that as soon as he heard her voice.

"Hello?"

"Hello," he agreed, his tone similar. He couldn't fight the smile that spread across his face. "Why are you still awake?"

"I could ask you the same question since your body thinks it's three in the morning."

"Well…I was hanging out with my mom," he said conversationally. "Who're you hanging out with?"

She sighed. "Just me and Flynn Rider tonight."

"You're still working?" He asked.

"Not now, but I was 'til about three hours ago."

"You work too hard, babe."

"I work hard so I don't remember how much I miss you," she said. Her voice dropped a little, although it was still low and sweet. His heart dropped too. "How did I survive two days without even talking to you?"

He shifted a little in bed, rolling over so the pillow pinched the phone to his ear. "Let's not make it so long next time. Call me every couple hours or so, yeah?"

She laughed and his heart picked back up. God, he loved her voice, especially when she sounded happy. "Well I wouldn't want to interrupt your practice. Of course I know how important that is."

"It's also important I don't kill Brandon since he's singing lead mostly and… well, he's going to make me crazy before we ever get started. So really, you're doing _him_ a favor too."

Her laugh picked up and he tried really hard to take a steady breath in. "Well, if _that's_ the case, I think my co-workers would benefit if you did the same thing."

"If you call me every two hours and I call you every two hours, we'll be on the phone all the time," he protested. It really didn't sound like that bad of a deal even though it sounded _expensive_. Maybe he should look at picking up some sort of a side job for extra money while he was in town, considering he had almost no prospects in London. Then again, there was the _one_ offer and if the band won this thing, he wouldn't need any. Why did that thought make him a little sad?

"Is that complaining I hear?" She asked. He could hear rustling in the background and realized it had been almost constant on her end since the call had started.

"Rach…what is that noise? Do we have a bad connection or something?" He knew they didn't. He also had a guess why she was tossing and turning. He grinned to himself.

"N-no." She said. The noise stopped. "No. Everything's fine. I'm just in bed. I can't get comfortable, that's all."

His grin got bigger. He knew exactly what the problem was 'cause let's face it… same boat, different paddle. "Yeah? Me, either."

"I'm just….I'm just… all _on edge_. I miss you so much and…and it's making me tense. I feel like I'm going to explode all the time. Breathing exercises aren't helping, either."

He couldn't help it. He laughed. "Rachel…it's okay to say you're turned on, y'know. Especially to me 'cause I like knowing that sorta thing."

"You better be laughing because you can relate. And how does saying anything about it do any good if you're there and I'm here?"

"I can still help," he said. He couldn't help it—his voice dropped. A lot. It was that voice he only had when he talked to her.

"How?" She asked. She sounded honestly confused. She was so…like, just amazing. It kind of blew his mind that they could be over a decade into a relationship (whatever with the details, technically it had been a long time since he'd started loving her and wanting to be with her so he was counting it), married, and whatever—but still sharing _firsts_.

"Well…I think technically you have to take care of it but I could help," he started. "The same way I always help."

"I don't know if I can do that," she admitted. "It seems kind of weird."

"What are you wearing?" He asked. She laughed immediately—and she laughed _hard._ She was a jerk. "Stop it, I'm serious."

"Oh," she said. "Well…I'm just wearing a tanktop and my underwear."

"Which tanktop?" He said, closing his eyes. He rolled to his back and tried to picture her in their bed, wearing any tanktop and any of her underwear. It was how she crawled into bed when she was trying not to wake him up. It usually didn't work and he usually took advantage of having her close, half-naked, and in bed. _He_ didn't really need any more help to get turned on than that.

"The dark brown lacy one," she said. "The one that's really tight."

He knew which one. He _loved_ that one. He could see patches of skin through it; different sizes in different spots, and it was like a puzzle. When she moved, it moved too and he could see different patches of skin. The fabric clung to her skin and he loved the way he could slide his hand over her stomach and feel how warm she always was while the rough fabric scratched on the back of his hand. He never, ever actually took that tanktop off her.

"Mmm," he said. "I really like that one. I like to leave that one on and watch you move," he said. He had _no_ idea what to say. It was kind of like dirty-talk in general. "You're so hot when you move."

"Of course I am," she said simply. He could hear the smile in her voice. "You're so hot when you touch me."

"I _have_ to touch you," he said. "But I can't do it. Do it for me."

"What?"

"You know how I touch you when you wear that—touch for me. Tell me how it feels," he said. His heart was pounding and he had _no_ idea if this was how to do this or not. He just knew he needed something to take the edge off and she probably did, too. He had to try.

He could hear the rustling in the background again; she was totally doing what he said. He could also hear her breathing and it was a little unsteady.

"Tell me, babe," he reminded her.

"It's not as good…" she admitted. "You…you touch me a-and…" she blew out a long breath. "You're just really good at it, babe. I can't…"

"What else do I do that turns you on?" He asked. He rubbed his hand over the front of his boxers; he needed some sort of friction. He could hear her moving somehow over the phone line, could hear her voice getting a little more breathless. "What else can I do?"

"Mmmm…." She considered it out loud and he just about jumped up to the roof. All she had to do was, like, _breathe_, apparently and he was ready to go. He wished (hoped) it was that easy for her too. "Sing something."

His eyes came open. She fucking expected him to remember song lyrics and…like…_listen_ to her at the same time? He was pretty sure he wasn't that skilled. He knew automatically what he was going to sing though, 'cause he'd already sent her some of the lyrics and the song was pretty hot. He knew it 'cause Brandon had insisted the band learn it when he was trying to sex up some girl (that was over). They had practiced it a lot for some other reasons he wasn't going to think about at the moment. He licked his lips and took a steady breath. His hand stopped its movement and tried to concentrate on the words and the music and her.

_In the rain, I'm walking slowly. There's a light in your apartment, I don't know why—I ache for you. _

She sighed and he bit back a smile.

_It's all right if you're undecided, or if you're scared that you might like it, or if it's true. I ache for you. There's no rhyme and there's no reason, you're the secret in the back of my skull. There's no logic so please believe me. Our love's confusing but it never gets dull_.

Her breath hitched and she let out a low sound that went straight through him. His hand just kind of started moving and he took a quick, deep breath to try and keep going. He could picture her laying on her bed, moving her own hands over her body and thinking of him. He totally liked it, actually, even if he kind of felt like an idiot singing with no music.

_It's getting late, anticipation and if we talk, communication. Then you'll know I ache for you. Yes sometimes it's just desire, another problem that you really don't want but anyway, I ache for you. There's no rhyme and there's no reason, you're the secret in the back of my skull. There's no logic so please believe me. Our love's confusing but it never gets dull. I ache for you._

She let out this sound that… he knew whatever she was doing to herself was working. It was like all ability to think left him. Not that she didn't know her own body, but he felt like maybe he should do something besides sing.

"You're so close," he breathed. He wasn't physically capable of talking any louder than a low voice and he didn't want to anyway. "You're so close. If I was there, I'd put my fingers inside you so I could feel you come."

"No," she said. "No."

"You feel so good when you come," he said. He couldn't think too much about the actual words he was saying; he was uncomfortable for a couple of reasons and he was really afraid she was going to hate talking dirty. It's not like they'd really done it at all. "C'mon babe. You know how it feels for you already. Well it feels good for me too."

She let out a rough, high-pitched cry and his eyes slammed closed. He knew what this part looked like—in some ways—and it was like the image was burned into his eyelids. His memory danced back to their last night together (not the one fighting, the other one) and it was like he was there. He could smell her lotion burned into his skin and on the pillow he slept on. He could feel her warm, wet skin under his fingertips, and he could feel her heartbeat mixing with his as his pounded through his whole body when he came undone with her name on his lips. He slipped his hands into his shorts and gripped tighter, settling into an automatic rhythm, wishing it felt as good as her on top of him in any way.

"What…what are you doing?"

"God, you're right…it feels so good," she said. He just about lost it, thinking about her in their bed with her fingers doing what his wanted to do so badly—taking the edge off for herself. She was so fucking sexy. "Mmm…I miss you. Come with me."

Her panting request jolted through him. He tightened his grip and sped up. "You first," he said. "I want to hear it."

"No _you_ first. You'll…it'll make me. Please?" She said, the last word a squeaky question that sent him right over the edge. He came so hard it almost hurt; it'd been too long since he got laid. He had no idea what he said, but he knew words were spilling out of his mouth and under his breath.

About the time his heart wasn't loud in his ears, he heard her saying his name under her own breath and he couldn't really make out the other words. He didn't know if that's because his brain wasn't processing or because she wasn't saying actual words.

There was a long stretch of silence, the only actual sound their heavy breathing and the occasional break when someone would lick their lips. When he finally felt like he could move again, he fumbled blindly for his discarded t-shirt to clean up with. (That had always made laundry day awkward, but they were softer, okay?)

Once he had tossed the shirt away and stripped out of his boxers, too, he settled back into bed.

"Please tell me your band is going to lose," she breathed into the phone. It was the first time he'd ever heard her sound anything less than supportive and almost forceful about their eventual win. He laughed out loud.

"What makes you say that, babe?"

"You just need to come home soon, okay?" She said. "I need you here with me."

"I miss you, too." He rolled over, trying really hard to ignore the fact that he was talking to his wife on the phone and laying in a twin-sized bed without her there at the end of his reach. Or closer than the end of his reach. He kind of hated it, actually. How could… finishing or whatever someone wanted to call it… leave him wanting more? He sighed. He just wanted to talk to her and feel even a little normal for a minute. It was so dark he could pretend her voice was muffled by a pillow instead of a phone line. "How was your day?"

They chatted casually for a few minutes until her voice started to drift away and he knew she was falling asleep. He actually kissed the phone (shut up, he was going to write it off as one of those stupid things no one else would ever, _ever_ know about) and they hung up. He felt like some sort of a needy, bottomless pit; really all he wanted to do was call her back again.


	7. Seven: Resident Expert in Seeing Red

**A/N: **So hopefully everyone is still with me; the boards seem kind of slow. Major thanks to those reading and whatever is bigger than major thanks to those replying. I think this is my favorite chapter of this story so far so please let me know what you think—good, bad, or otherwise. :)

**Disclaimer: ** I don't own and am not affiliated with Glee.

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><p><strong>Chapter Seven: Resident Expert in Seeing Red<strong>

Rachel's phone rang, loud and clear, around eight o'clock on Saturday evening and she frowned as it pulled her from sleeping where she'd curled up on the couch. She'd actually been reading a book…and she found it crashed haphazardly on the floor but she couldn't be bothered with it when she realized what the ringtone was. It was Defying Gravity, which meant Kurt. Immediately her stomach lurched because the only reason she could think of that he'd be calling is if something were wrong with Finn.

She was still struggling to get everything changed over to her new last name. What if something happened and they—whoever _they_ were—didn't know who to call? But wouldn't Carole be a more likely caller for that situation anyway?

She must've answered at the last possible second because she had to squeak out two, terrified 'hello's before Kurt replied.

"Well, well, well. Look who decided to answer their phone _finally_."

"I'm sorry, I was asleep. Is…is everything okay?" She asked, trying to wipe the urgency out of her voice and failing miserably. She also couldn't hide her annoyance at the fact that it had been over three weeks since his nasty messages and even longer since she'd talked to him in person; the last time had been when he "signed off" on her dress for the Tony's ceremony.

"Everything is _fine_. Finn's band is going on in a minute and he practically ordered me to call you and let you listen until my phone battery dies." She could very nearly hear the eye roll in his voice. "Seems _someone _forgot to properly charge his cell phone; I must admit, I'd expected someone's new wife to be more eagerly awaiting the call."

She didn't really _want_ to admit she was actually under the weather. She was chalking it up to all the stress she'd been under for the past month or so; she knew it would pass. She'd managed to keep it out of her conversations with Finn because he had enough going on without needlessly worrying about her illness when there was nothing he could do about it. However, there was _no_ way she couldn't say something as she felt the second, stronger wave of nausea wash over her. Kurt was still talking and she couldn't. "Kurt…Kurt, I'm sorry but hang on for a moment, please." She chucked the phone on the couch and ran to the bathroom just in the nick of time. She hated to keep him waiting but she had to brush her teeth properly before she returned; no negotiation.

"Where in the hell did you go?" Kurt said. "Swimming the Channel?"

She sighed. "No, sorry. I…"

"You're sick," Kurt said simply and she really, really hated having a best friend that knew her so well she couldn't—wait, didn't have to—speak for him to know what was going on. He knew because she hadn't faked amusement at his lame joke. "You're sick and you don't want to tell me because you think I'll tell Finn."

"Which you _won't_," she stressed. "It's minor. And I haven't talked to you in _weeks_."

"Well…some things transcend a grudge and there are at least three more minutes until the band comes on judging by where they are in setup. So just save us both the trouble of this argument and give me the deets."

She huffed out an annoyed breath. "Someone is presumptuous."

"This isn't a new characteristic," he said. "All I need is a laundry list. I can diagnose almost anything with five symptoms. Sometimes less."

"You have a medical degree?" Rachel replied testily.

He sighed. "No, I spend too much time with models. You're wasting precious moments."

She thought for just a second because she knew if she took any longer than that, he'd start in on the next level of guilt trip. She could actually hear the band tuning in the background and knew he was pressed for time, which meant so was she.

She shook her head and let out an annoyed sigh. "Fine! Nausea, vomiting, abdominal cramps, fatigue, and…that's it."

"Well…I have one more symptom," he said. "Fever?"

"No."

"Your period?"

"Wh-what?" She asked. She faltered; she'd been so knee-jerk when she answered his last question. The second one gave her some pause. "I…"

"You need to take a pregnancy test," he said quickly. "Here, the band is starting. We'll talk about the message and everything else later." She could hear the way the sound moved as he turned his phone away from himself and held it in the air above the crowd so she could hear better.

She just blinked; she could barely hear the band playing and not because it was through a cell phone. There was just… no. _No way. No, no, no_. How had she not even though of a pregnancy test? Just no. She knew there was a good possibility she would throw up again.

Finn's voice came through the line and jerked her back to reality. The song he'd written her was in the middle of their three-song set and even though the connection wasn't crystal clear, she heard his voice like he was singing in her ear. He sounded even better than he had on the demo but not quite as good as on the phone the previous week with a different song and…different circumstances. She couldn't explain it, but she was crying well before Finn was done.

Kurt's phone actually lasted through the entire set, and so did hers. Once the last song was finished, she heard movement and then the call was lost somewhere before he actually said another word. She wasn't sure why, exactly, but she didn't bother trying to call him back. She sent him a brief text of thanks before she flipped out the lights and decided to go to bed early, her mind on overload and sleep still pretty far away.

It had been over ten years since she'd left Lima. She had never actually admitted it to herself, but when she had left, it was like she was giving up part of herself in a way. She was giving up the part that actually believed something was possible for her and Finn. She had given up that naïve hope that something, which had started when they were so young, could work out long-term. And now… well, now they were married and living somewhere new and she was quite likely pregnant with his child? Too much had happened too fast. There was _no_ way she was prepared to deal with any of it and she felt totally helpless, totally alone. All she could actually do was cry.

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><p>Finn couldn't really explain it, given that he already had a height advantage, but he still stood on tip-toe to find Kurt in the sweaty crowd. It was disgusting out, especially after playing even a three-song set on a stage that was lit. Like why did they bother lighting it at three in the afternoon on the fourth of July? It was ridiculous. All he really wanted was to find his stepbrother and his mom and his stepdad and go somewhere with air conditioning to get something to eat. They had drawn out first, so there were still like seven other bands playing and he knew he should probably listen to them, at least more than he had already listened to their demos. It felt like studying a play book, like he was back in football again and it was just <em>weird<em>.

He really didn't give a shit at the moment, though. All he wanted was to find Kurt and why _why_ was the dude who wore some of the loudest and weirdest clothes ever blending into this crowd? He wanted to know what Rachel had said. He hoped she was okay with Kurt calling her instead of him but his phone was beyond dead and tucked into his pocket to remain silent until he could find a power source. He still wanted to kick himself 'cause he just wanted to hear her voice and have her say he'd done well (and maybe give performance notes that she could revise after the radio station got the video up on YouTube).

Kurt was actually kind of over in a corner by the cinder-block concession stand with a frown on his face and his finger in one ear, with phone pressed to his other ear. Finn kind of stopped and went down on his feet to walk as normally as he could when he was like a fish going cross-stream. Upstream. Downstream. Whatever it was, that's how he felt. Also, he was now kind of dreading the moment when he'd have to take the phone from Kurt and cut off Rachel's rant.

It didn't play out like that, though. Kurt pulled the phone down and put it away once Finn got anywhere near him and then Kurt took the last couple of steps toward the fringe of the crowd that was still kind of shuffling away from the stage to look for a drink or whatever between performances.

"What's up?" Finn asked, more because of the look on Kurt's face than anything else. Kurt just latched onto Finn's arm so they didn't get separated and pointed to a quieter area tucked back by the locked employees-only entrance.

"Well, I called Rachel as you demanded," Kurt said.

"So can I talk to her?" Finn asked slowly, wondering why Kurt's phone was in his pocket if Rachel was on the other end waiting.

"I lost the connection at some point, but I don't know when and I can't get through to her again. She's usually fairly diligent about charging her phone unless something has changed, but I'm going straight to her voice mail." Kurt felt his phone against his leg and retrieved it, looking maybe a little relieved. "Here she is now, I'm sure." His face fell as soon as he laid eyes on the phone, though. "But it's just a text." He looked up at Finn. "Did you maybe forget to mention she's still completely angry with me?"

Finn shrugged. "Nah, I mean she just felt bad. She wasn't mad. _I _was the mad one, you ass. That message you left her was horrible and I ought to kick your ass for it."

"I'm not getting into that now. We have more important issues, like why she's not answering the phone until the last possible ring and why she hangs up when you're playing." Finn just shrugged and started walking off, Kurt jogging just a little to catch up to him. "Has she been acting this strangely since the illicit affair?"

Finn rolled his eyes. "You can stop calling our wedding that now and it'd be _great_," he said. "And no, I mean. She's a little crazy like always but she hasn't been acting weird at all."

"I hope you're prepared for that to change," Kurt said simply. "Because in case you don't remember from Quinn, that's what happens when girls are pregnant."

Finn could barely make out Kurt's words because they were back out in the thick of the crowd, even if it was less of a stream now and more just people milling around and making noise. It took him a minute, but when he actually realized what Kurt had said, he stopped and yanked at Kurt's elbow.

"Wait…what? What are you talking about?"

Kurt's eyes got very, very wide and he tried to find just the right words to backpedal.

"Are you… are you…" Finn couldn't really breathe. All he could do was blink, and it felt so much like when Quinn had told him she was pregnant in the hallway at school their sophomore year. He knew if he didn't start breathing, it would be like an actual problem sooner rather than later. But Rachel…Rachel was pregnant? How could that be?

Why did it feel like he was suffocating?

Oh yeah; the breathing.

"She's sick and she told me not to tell you so you've _got_ to not say anything until she does because she will _kill_ me and I like my life." Kurt watched Finn struggling for words. "Not that speaking up will be a problem if this continues."

"I…just… I'm not… no," Finn stammered. "She _can't_ be. She would've… she doesn't not tell me things. She _doesn't_…she would…she should." How long had this been going on? She hadn't said anything and he'd been gone for nearly two weeks. It could've happened…well, he really didn't know that much about this stuff (which was kind of annoying because now he couldn't just ask Rachel and he'd have to figure it out on his own) so he only imagined it could've been going on for a while. He was racking his brain for anything that was a symptom of that, but she'd really been acting pretty normal. Other than the night before he left, but they were both freaking out then so whatever…but it would've been longer than the night before the night before he left?

Fuck, that didn't really narrow much down. It was supposed to be okay because they were newlyweds; newlyweds did it a lot, right?

Finn toyed with his wedding ring a little, staring off into space and counting back. He had no idea how many times they'd had sex since he went to London like six weeks before. There was no way he could figure out how long this had been going on. She'd have to tell him and she just _hadn't_. It felt like a huge, huge lie to him. It just made him sick, basically. He twisted the band around his finger and tried to not feel sick and mad and confused and whatever else.

Kurt snorted a little and it brought Finn back to the present. He looked over at his brother. "What?"

"I don't know how I failed to notice, but your wedding band is _pink_. I'm totally getting one of those if me and Sam get married. What _is_ it?" Kurt said, jerking Finn's left hand toward him like Finn was some girl who had just coyly revealed her engagement.

"What do you mean, what is it?"

"What is it made out of… other than _pink_?"

"It's not… it's gold or something. It's not _made out of pink_," Finn protested. He jerked his hand away from Kurt. "Ask Rachel. It matches hers. I dunno what else."

Once he told Kurt to ask Rachel, the fist in his chest tightened up again and he needed to sit down. He was starting to get dizzy. He started looking for a bench or something and wasn't it, like, the _law_ that there had to be somewhere he could sit. "Where are mom and dad?" Finn said simply, his own voice hollow in his ears over the ringing and every beat of his heart pronounced in his chest. He was still looking for somewhere to sit but he debated making a break for it to the bathrooms on the opposite side of the concession stand.

"Finn, you're going pale and it's like five hundred degrees out here."

"Yeah well…" Finn explained. He had no idea what else to say other than he thought he might pass out and the panic was starting to overwhelm him because he might've wanted to punch Kurt but he didn't want to crush him and that's what would happen if he passed out and Kurt tried to catch him or something. The closest thing he could find was a chair, one of a group actually, set up near the stage. He started toward it. He wondered if he could put his head between his knees; like if that was physically possible or if it would even help.

He dropped into the chair and dropped his head in his hands, letting up only for a second to get the drumsticks out of his back pocket because they were not that comfortable to sit on. He basically needed one thing to be going right at the moment, and if he wasn't getting poked in the ass that'd be a great start, even if it looked like he had horns or something. Kurt just sat down next to him, not knowing what to say or what to do. So he just sat and scanned the crowd for any sign of the Hudson-Hummel parents. He saw Finn's bandmates first, appearing kind of one at a time.

Josh and Katie were the first to appear out of the crowd. Josh seemed to sense something was up because all that happened once he actually caught sight of them was his eyes shifted from Finn to Kurt. Kurt just shrugged. Finn didn't even respond, but kind of appeared to be focusing on his breathing and keeping it slow and steady, his head still in his hands.

Kurt finally stood, still a little anxious by the fact Finn hadn't said anything but also their parents were nowhere to be found. "Will you guys just… mom and dad are here and we were supposed to find them…but Finn needed to, um, sit." He gestured over to Finn.

"Sure," Katie said. Josh shook his head. "I'm going to go find beer. You want, Kate?" She nodded and held up two fingers, most likely indicating one for Finn as well. He kissed her cheek and was gone, and she just took the chair Kurt had been in so Kurt felt okay leaving.

"C'mon, Hudson. Spill," she said simply, her hand reaching out to stroke his back. He very obviously needed friend sympathy of some kind. "I know this isn't about the set because you guys sounded awesome, so…"

He looked over at her and just shook his head. His hands were still in his hair and his eyes were squinting against the bright sunshine. "It's not about the set."

"Which means it's about Rachel," Katie said flatly. "Since you have exactly two things going on in your life at the moment."

"Hey!" Finn protested.

"So what did she do? Or not do?"

Her hand was still on his back and it made him feel a little better; a little less like he was going to throw up or die or whatever. He took a deep breath. "It's not even that…it's just…people do it every day, right? We could totally do it. It'd be fine, wouldn't it?"

"You lost me," Katie said, reaching her free hand up to tug at a strand of hair that was stuck in her lip gloss. "What would be fine?"

Instead of coughing up any clear answers though, all Finn did was reach into his jeans pocket, shifting in the seat so he could pull his phone free. "I just…I need to talk to her. That's really all there is to it and my phone is…" he held it up and twisted it a couple different ways to see the screen. "Dead. My battery is so dead I can't call her." He sighed and shook his head. "Kurt said Rachel's pregnant. She hasn't said a word to me."

Katie's eyebrows when up and her mouth formed a perfect little 'O'.

"I shouldn't freak the fuck out," he muttered. "I just can't…it's like I can't help it. Just the thought of…and I left...and…" he put his head back in his hands. "Ugh."

"Maybe she's still trying to make sure," Katie said weakly.

"And that's why Kurt knows, I'm sure. She thought she'd talk it over with my brother first….who, by the way, she's not actually _talking _to at the moment."

"This gets worse the more you talk," she said, looking around and wondering what the odds were Josh had found a beer stand two steps to the left so he'd be back any time resembling soon.

"Thanks. Tell me about it," he said. "Can you even imagine the…just the…if she's pregnant, we are so _fucked_. We can't…we can't support a baby. We can't raise a baby yet. We haven't even talked about if we want kids."

"You _what_?" She gasped out in surprise. "C'mon, Finn; you can't tell me that shouldn't have come up before you got married."

"Maybe it should've but it didn't."

"Well, you know what I'm going to say because you already said it. You need to talk to her." Katie was still rubbing at his back and he had to admit it made it a little easier to breathe. "What _exactly_ happened?"

Finn took his first truly steady, deep breath in at least five minutes. "Well, my phone's dead, so I had Kurt call her and let her listen to the set. Somewhere in there he wasn't paying attention and they got disconnected and she wouldn't answer when he called her back. And then he blurted out that little bit of information and my heart stopped and here we are."

"What words did he use, though? Is it possible you misunderstood?"

"M'not a total idiot."

"I never said you _were_, but you _can be_. What did he say?"

Finn shot her a dirty look and his eyes rolled for a second as he laid out the entire conversation in his head. "He asked if she'd been acting weird since we eloped and I said no more than normal 'cause she's a little weird all the time, and then he said if I didn't remember from Quinn that girls get crazy when they're pregnant so I should get ready for that. I asked him what he meant and he told me Rachel's been sick and didn't want to tell me and she's pregnant."

"When was Quinn pregnant? Did I_ miss_ that?"

"No, it was in high school…" he closed his eyes and shook his head. "The first time we dated and that's how it ended 'cause she lied and said the baby was mine and…I don't want to get into all this, I want to talk to Rachel. _Why _wouldn't she just tell me, Katie?_" _He dropped his head in his hands. "I should be the first person to know something like that, not _Kurt_."

"Well, I don't know why she wouldn't tell you first," Katie said quietly. She kept one hand on his back and twisted to reach into her purse. "But here, just call her. You said she's not really talking to Kurt, so I'm guessing there's some sort of a misunderstanding going on that isn't worth freaking out over."

Finn reached over and put a hand on her arm to stop her. "Thanks, but I'm totally not making an international call from your cell phone." He reached up to point. "Plus there's Josh."

She looked over at him with a little smile. "Okay, but don't let this go on too long. You deserve to know the truth and be part of whatever choices she makes, even if you're here and she's there. And if the set you guys played is any indication, you're not going back to London for a while. Damn it."

He gave a small smile; Katie was not-so-secretly stressed out about the minor success the band was having; Josh was getting to the point where he needed to decide if he was going to quit his job and chase a dream or if he was going to be more realistic and stay put so they could start a family. She was trying to be supportive and…and his wife was just _absent_. He was an ass for thinking it, but he couldn't help himself either.

"It was good?"

"Yeah, it was really good. Especially your song," she said. "Are you working on anything for the EP?"

He just shrugged. He'd thought about it, sure, but he was totally coming up blank and _now_ he knew that wasn't going to change anything. "I dunno, I mean…" he'd kind of misunderstood the order of things when he'd explained the contest to Rachel and now it was only becoming clear kind of as he was living it. Out of the eight bands at the concert today, the top four (as voted by ticket and merchandise sales, and the audience) would flesh out their recordings and then the radio station would do a sales drive on the EPs. Whichever sold the most EPs would go with the other statewide top finishers on a small regional tour. "I mean, yeah it'd be kind of cool but I think Craig will be done with his before I even get another one started."

"All right you two, break it up," Josh said simply. He handed Katie a beer first out of the three he held all pinched together. He twisted and offered one to Finn. Finn took it and said thanks even though he had no intention of drinking and he wasn't totally sure he wouldn't still throw up.

Katie laughed and shook her head as she held up her drink. "Well, here's to the band. Let's hope Brandon is offering sexual favors and selling lots of merch so you guys win."

The two guys laughed and they all clapped their plastic cups together. Almost out of habit, Finn took a drink and it actually kind of made him feel a little better—more normal. Like himself in some small way.

"Do you guys think my wedding ring is pink?" He asked suddenly, his eyes looking between them because he knew his brother was stupid but _these guys_ were honest.

"I'm colorblind," Josh said. "At least to reds, so I'm the way fucking wrong person to ask."

"You work for Ohio State. How can you _not_ see red?" Finn asked. "That's just, like, _wrong_."

Katie nodded. "It's totally fucked up. I've thought about switching it out for gold and blue just to see what he'd do." Finn laughed out loud as Josh muttered something about how he would at least notice that. She continued. "But as the resident expert in seeing red, I say it's rose gold. It's not _pink_. And it probably makes your wife happy for you to wear it, even if it's not as visible as other rings would be because it matches your skin more."

"Matches my _skin_?" Finn asked. He looked down at where his left hand was holding the beer. "I don't…"

"It's not pink," Katie said. "Leave it on. At least until you talk to her and she ruins your life."

"Oh, _thank you_," Finn replied. He saw his parents and Kurt approaching and he stood up, tucking phone and drumsticks into appropriate pockets and shifting his beer from hand to hand as needed. "I don't have to sit here and take this shit, you know."

"Nope, you can just take it later on when you come back to the house." Katie smiled widely. "Have fu-un."

Finn looked to Josh and Josh shrugged. Not like he could control what his wife did. Finn turned toward his family and, thing was, he knew he couldn't control his wife, either. But he could sure as hell be mad when she left him in the dark, and that was slowly overriding the panic. Yeah, he needed to talk to her and the sooner the better because this was the kind of thing that made for a slow burn if he let it.


	8. Eight: Head Full of Tangles

**A/N: ** Okay, so I have a great group of followers. Thank you for the reviews, replies, reblogs, PMs, questions, answers and conversation. It's been awesome and we should totally do it again. That's not even subtle enough to be a hint. Chapter title from the song **Drop to Hold You** by **Matt Nathanson.**

**Disclaimer: ** I do not own and am not affiliated with Glee or much of anything else, really.

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><p><strong>Chapter Eight: Head Full of Tangles<strong>

Rachel sighed and blew her bangs out of her face. It was unseasonably warm out but it was also cloudy and rainy. She hated the feeling that she was trying to breathe through some sort of viscous liquid, especially when Matt kept making her sing her way through everything in the first act now that they had the music totally finished (including instrumentation being written into the script even where characters weren't singing); he kept insisting the first act was somehow "out of musical balance" with the second act and they needed to find the missing piece. Apparently looking for the missing piece required her to sing her guts out on a daily basis, which she wasn't particularly in the mood to do. If he heard Matt's argument that timing was subjective to artistry _one more time_ as justification…

She supposed it could be argued that she was wound a little more tightly than normal because she hadn't talked to Finn at all in the four days since his festival thing. She hadn't had the chance to tell him what a remarkable job they'd done. She'd been so busy fine-tuning the sheet music at the office she hadn't even checked the YouTube links emailed to her (and to _everyone_) by their newly-hired band manager, Colby. She had finally resorted to sending Finn a text message early this morning—around midnight his time—to tell him again how much she loved him, loved his voice, and had really enjoyed his performance (she left out the puking and marathon crying, though.)

He hadn't bothered to respond yet as far as she knew, and it was setting her on edge more than anything else. The situation was further complicated by Matt's insistence that she keep her cell phone on silent whenever they were working together; truthfully that was a compromise, too, because he'd wanted her to keep it in her purse and her office. She had refused, citing the fact that her husband was overseas.

She neglected to mention she had put in a request yesterday for Laney to see how her current contract could be altered and if there was a way to get her out of England any sooner. So of course she was waiting to hear back on that as well. She tipped her phone up off of the table, seeing nothing waiting for her, and turned back to the conversation.

"… about how she's going to take the baby and raise her? Maybe a little more focus on that. Give Rachel one more solo."

She blinked hard once, trying to remember if she'd actually _heard_ Thomas' previous words. Yeah, she hadn't. "What?"

"Please _do_ try to keep up," Bridget said testily. She turned to look at Thomas. "That won't work. Her other solo is also in the first act. How would that balance anything? She certainly _isn't_ the lead."

Rachel rolled her eyes. "Well, it could balance out the group numbers in the second act, if you argued the first act was explaining the motivations for—"

"—are you lobbying for another solo?" Matt said, cutting her off.

She huffed out a breath and tipped her head toward him. "Of course I am. I _always_ am," she said simply. She shrugged. "But it's not really about that. In the end, it doesn't matter because it's not like this will be _my_ role. We need to create something lasting here, something more far-reaching than I'm going to accomplish in a two-week run."

"We all know you'll sign on longer than that. You can't bear an absence from the stage for any real length of time," Thomas argued. "And you will be the stage originator of this role."

She opened her mouth to speak as her phone rang and she totally disregarded all three dirty looks as she closed her mouth and looked down. It wasn't Finn, as she had hoped though; it was her dad. Her dad who had barely slept in the last few weeks, waiting for his long-time partner to drop dead because he was refusing major heart surgery for reasons that made no sense.

She felt like she was going to throw up again, in just that instance of seeing Hiram Berry's image flash across a call screen. He'd been open-mouthed and protesting the fact that she was taking his picture when she took it and then she told him was perfect because that's what he looked like on the phone with her. She didn't even bother verbally excusing herself as she answered the phone.

"Dad?" She said simply, her voice already tight with worry and her stomach rocky again. She scrambled out of her chair and headed toward the bathroom because she knew she was going to need to be there sooner rather than later.

"Hi, Ray," he said, his voice low and possibly sounding like he'd been crying. "Sorry to bother you in the middle of your workday."

"You're not…what's…"

"Daddy's in the hospital with chest pain," he said. "They're reasonably certain it isn't a heart attack yet. They're calling it angina pending further results but…but when he's finished with these tests will you talk to him again? He just…he needs the bypass and I can't talk to him about it any more."

She pressed her hand to the wooden, swinging door of the women's bathroom and stopped without going in. "I—what good will it do for me to talk to him? I have already tried and failed."

"I know, I… I can't get this phone call again, though. I can't be summoned to the hospital with the understanding he might be dead before I arrive and…"

She burst out in frustration. "Why is he doing this?"

"I wish I understood, pumpkin. You sound…you sound sick. Are you okay?"

"No, I'm _not_ okay," she replied sharply. She sniffled a little bit. "I get phone calls like this and I can't be there. I…I don't even have…"

"We did go see Finn. His band was wonderful," he said simply. "We were unable to catch up with him after the performance."

"You and me both," she said, closing her eyes and letting the warm saltwater squeeze down over her cheeks. "I'm wondering if he's mad at me for some reason and I can't…I just can't talk to him, I can't talk to Daddy…I'm _useless_ when I'm here. I need to just come home and…"

There was a long pause on the other end of the line. "You have an obligation to stay there, though."

She didn't point out the fact that obligation and contractual agreements were the only thing keeping her at work at the very moment—not that any of the things she was worrying over could be solved with a six-plus hour plane trip that would cost literally thousands of dollars anyway.

"I know," she sighed. The urge to throw up her 'working lunch' was creeping up on her even more rapidly now and he was going to hear her if he didn't get off the phone. "When will Daddy be finished?"

He sighed and she didn't mess the way the tension in his voice ratcheted up. "The doctor is motioning to me now, sweetheart. Will you just call when you're finished at work?"

She was already in the bathroom, turning to lock the stall. "Yes," she said simply. "Love to you."

"You too, sweetheart."

And then he was gone and she was throwing up, wishing it was as easy to rid herself of hurt feelings, of loss and loneliness, as it was to get rid of the second-rate salad.

As she came out of the restroom, she looked at her phone again, wishing for any indication Finn was available. She just really wanted to hear his voice; she kind of wondered if he would be willing to make the drive to talk to her parents, too. Part of being married was stewardship, right? Maybe it was time she learned how to let someone else handle something for once; she knew Finn was more than capable, it was just his willingness she was beginning to doubt at this point. Even that she hoped could be cleared up with a phone call.

She could still hear voices from Matt's office, but she turned and went into her own and then secured the door behind her before she dialed his number. Her stomach rocked again, rolling a little and she leaned against the door. She hoped she could make it through the whole conversation without vomiting again. Despite two (okay, seven) negative pregnancy tests, she had an appointment with a general practitioner later in the week because obviously _something _was up. She just didn't feel right discussing it with him until she knew what it was, and she knew if she had to put him on hold so she could throw up it would start a conversation.

"Hello?" Finn answered, sounding kind of rushed. She glanced at the small clock on the wall above the digital piano and frowned. It was eight o'clock in the morning there, but she wasn't sure why he was even out of bed; she had no idea what she'd interrupted.

"Hey babe," she said simply. "Are you in the middle of something?"

"Sort of," he said. He didn't elaborate and she frowned. "What's up?"

She let out a dry, disbelieving laugh. "What do you mean _what's up_? I haven't talked to you in four days outside of checking for signs of life. And you didn't even text me back this morning."

"I was supposed to text you back?" He said, sounding a little confused. "Sorry…I didn't know."

"Is…is something going on?" She asked. She knew her voice was tiny. She hated that. She swallowed hard and stood up straight and tried to not sound weak.

"I don't know," he said. The noise in the background wherever he was faded and it was quiet, his voice a little more clear over the line. "You tell me."

"Well, actually…I _was _wondering if you could do me a favor, but if you're in the middle of something I…"

"I'm listening," he said. His voice was lower and more normal and it totally brought tears to the back of her throat even though she didn't know _why_.

"Um," she started, sniffling along the way and feeling like she would not make it through the conversation without losing the rest of her lunch.

"Babe…are you…" he sounded a little worried, more tender than he had in their rushed conversations over the last couple days. "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine," she said. "It's…it's my Daddy. They took him to the hospital with chest pain this morning and…and even though they're saying it's not a heart attack—not _yet_—he still won't have the stupid surgery and my Dad is losing his mind and…could you…would you go talk to him for me… _please_?"

"Oh," he said. He seemed almost surprised and she really had no idea what to make of that. "I…is he at the hospital in Lima or…"

"He's been going to the one in Dayton," she said. "I know it's out of your way, but…"

"Consider it done," he said. "I'll let you know after I talk to him. Anything else?"

His tone had steeled again and _that_ probably made her cry more than anything else. She shook her head even as she squeaked out an answer. "No…I…that'll be all I suppose."

"'kay. I have to run then. Bye, Rach."

"Bye," she said. "I love you."

But she whispered the words and he had hung up before she even started saying them. She knew he was angry now; she just had no idea what it could be about. She knew he was angry enough he didn't _want_ to talk to her any longer than he really had to, but not angry enough to deny her request or ignore her call. So that put it at a mid-level anger or irritation. Why didn't that help her feel any better?

* * *

><p>Finn stood at the end of the hallway and let out a long, deep breath. The hour-long drive from Columbus to Dayton didn't really help as much as he'd hoped it would, either. He had her dad's phone number for some reason, and Hiram had reassured him they would be there and thanked Finn profusely when he said Rachel had asked him to go and he was on his way. It didn't mean he knew what to say once he got there.<p>

He'd been turning over the entire situation in his mind for three days; well, okay. He could only turn parts of it over at a time because it hadn't all happened at once. Kurt had pulled him aside when their family went out to dinner to apologize like a hundred times and admit Rachel had sworn him to secrecy about the whole pregnant thing, which just made Finn even madder. If she specifically told Kurt not to tell Finn…then what? She was _keeping_ it from him? That seemed a lot worse than just _not telling_. The biggest reason for Rachel not to just blurt something out was because she didn't think she needed help dealing with it. So…did that mean she was dealing with it on her own, without him or without asking him what he thought?

That possibility just kinda made him feel sick.

He blew out a breath again, focusing on counting with it and only then realizing it was a breathing-control exercise she had taught him. He just couldn't even get away from her to think for a few seconds. It was good and bad. When she had called this morning, he was so sure she was calling to come clean and to tell him and then he could admit she had hurt his feelings not telling him sooner 'cause he already knew. Instead, she'd given him chores. He'd been planning on talking to her dads already, especially Leroy about the surgery, but she'd kinda stepped up the timetable he had going. He had hoped—apparently even though he knew better because what good did just hope ever do _anyone_?—she would say something about the fact that they were going to have a kid. But whatever, she still hadn't volunteered the information even when he pushed her and he really didn't know what to do with that. He was looking forward to calling her even less than he was looking forward to a heart-to-heart (about a heart?) with her 'Daddy'.

He looked down at the note in his hand, where he'd scribbled Leroy's room number during his conversation with Hiram; he started down the hall, watching as the numbers on one side went up and on the other side went down. He was looking for number eighteen, and was still about two doors away when he saw Hiram come out.

"Oh hello, Finn," Hiram said. "Thanks again for coming." He had just pulled the door closed and looked at it. "I…Rachel and I have both tried to talk some sense into him and it's not working. The doctor has been in on three occasions today as well and he is just so stubborn." He turned to face Finn.

Finn had to smile a little because he knew those ropes a little too well. "Yeah," he agreed. He tucked his hands into his pockets. "I s'pose Rachel comes by that honestly enough."

Hiram gave a small chuckle that seemed like maybe the first time he'd laughed all day. "Truer words have never been spoken. Do you know what you're going to say to him?"

Finn looked at the door, then blankly at the guy who was about five inches shorter. "Nah. I really don't, but Rachel asked me to come so I had to try, you know?"

"She didn't have any ideas about what you should say?"

He looked over at her dad strangely, and it didn't help the anger or anything else at all. He was still mad at her and he needed to find a way to put a lid on it for the time being. It wasn't like he was gonna leave her or anything, definitely not _now_, but he wasn't going to broadcast anything to her dads either. "I'm sure she did, but I didn't ask."

Hiram's eyebrow went up in response. "Everything okay?"

"It'll be fine, it's just…her there and me here… it's hard, y'know? I mean, things just go on that would get taken care of and things that wouldn't happen at all happen and…"

"You're being intentionally vague."

Finn let out a hard laugh; he wasn't sure _which_ of her dads Rachel had more in common with, but dealing with them when she wasn't around as a buffer was almost a special kind of torture wherein there were actually more people calling him out. "Yes I am. I'm just… we'll work it out when we really get a chance to talk. I don't wanna talk to anyone but her about it."

Hiram nodded and patted Finn's back. "Well that's probably a wise idea; stops a lot of conjecture. I'm going to go grab some dinner because I haven't actually eaten today and we weren't getting anywhere. Do you need anything?"

He'd already eaten in the car on his way down. He didn't want to necessarily admit that (Hiram was the other vegan in the family and would have more to say about Finn stopping at Wendy's than even Rachel would), so he just shook his head. "No, thank you. I'm just going to go on in." Hiram just nodded and went his separate way with a wave, clearly assuming Finn wasn't going to stay long (and correctly; Finn was only staying as long as it took.)

Leroy looked really, really small in the hospital bed. Finn wondered briefly, if it made _Leroy_ look small, what Rachel would look like in the same place and would he _really_ be able to just stand by and be happy while she was in pain and she was crying and like…giving _birth_? Quinn had described the experience for him once and…and he wasn't sure he could just stand there. He wasn't sure he could stand to see Rachel in a hospital bed. He wasn't sure he could stand to see her look any smaller than she normally did because she was just fucking tiny and larger-than-life at the same time.

He cleared his throat, both to get her dad's attention and to get rid of that train of thought.

"Oh, hello Finn." The man sounded as tired as he looked and that didn't help the tension Finn felt _at all_.

"Hi, Mr. Berry," he said softly. He took the chair where he assumed Hiram had spent the better portion of the day.

"I take it Rachel called you."

"That's right," Finn said. "But you know…I mean, technically you're related to me now too, so…"

"Yes, I suppose I am," Leroy said. "I guess that means you can call me by my first name."

Finn gave a soft smile. "I can do that, but I don't suppose you'd be willing to take it in trade for something."

"You want me to have the surgery, too?" Leroy asked. Finn just nodded. "Why?"

"It'd be stupid not to do it now. If you do it now…the way I understand it, the chances of a problem are way less. And if you wait, like, _at all_…you could die. You will probably die."

"Did Rachel tell you _why _I don't want to do it? Why I've been so adamant?"

"She said it didn't help your father and your relationship with him was screwed up before and then he died before you could fix it."

Leroy nodded. "The heart problems have killed every member of my family early. They can't convince me having a bypass is going to change that; it just means I'll have different problems."

"So why give Rachel and Mr. Berry hope you'll be around, is that what you're saying?"

"Why stick them with thousands in medical bills if I can just…"

Finn sighed. "If you can just _die_? Don't you love them at all?" Leroy's eyes flashed and he opened his mouth but Finn continued. " 'Cause your refusal is hurting them. Your death will probably kill them."

"My death is inevitable," Leroy argued.

"Yours and mine both," Finn said with a shrug. "But I know how bad it sucks to lose a Dad. I don't know if Rachel could handle it. And my dad, well… it's not like he got a choice in it but…but he doesn't know me and he never really did and now… well, do you want to, like… meet your grandkids? Or like, see Rachel move back to Ohio ever?"

Leroy let out a stuttered laugh. "Is that… what are you saying?"

"I think…" Finn blew out a breath. "I think Rachel wants to move back here eventually, and especially if we decide to have kids. And I want to because I want them to know you and my parents. We want to be all about family and it's just…it isn't the same if someone is missing, alright?"

(He just wasn't mentioning how soon that could be a reality _or _the fact that it was all—what had Hiram called it? _Conjecture_—undiscussed at this point.)

"Really?" Leroy asked.

"Yeah, really. Isn't that worth sticking around for? 'Cause it totally sucks to be a kid and not have family around."

"Has Rachel told you anything about _my_ family?" He asked, sending Finn a pointed look.

"Yeah well…I thought Rachel and Mr. Berry were your family. Fuck the rest of 'em."

Leroy's expression was unreadable. "You're the first person that's dared to say that to me. _Ever._"

"Maybe I'm just the first person who's that stupid," Finn said simply. "But I don't…I don't really want to, like—I don't want to give you room for doubt what I think, if you even care about my opinion. But I _know_ you care about them and their opinions and I know they can't really be that clear with feelings because they get too upset when it's too close to them."

That made Leroy laugh out loud. Once his laughter calmed a little, he looked over at Finn. "You and I probably have a lot of common ground," he said simply. "You have any fries left?"

"Are you kidding me?" Finn asked with a disbelieving laugh. "No, I don't have any left…and what…how…"

"I can smell them. Bring me some after," Leroy requested.

"I don't know about that," Finn replied. "But we have time to plan…or at least we _will_. And even though it'll probably make food-smuggling like a hundred times harder, I'll get Rachel here when you have it. You aren't…just 'cause everything was messed up when your dad went and died and whatever… I mean it doesn't have to be like that for you and odds are that it won't be like that at all."

"It's very intimidating, this surgery," Leroy said. "You're making it sound easy."

"Easy compared to dying and missing everything," Finn said with a shrug.

"They're going to wonder how you persuaded me seemingly so easily," he warned, looking over at Finn but still resting heavily against the pillows.

"I'll tell 'em it was the promise of fries," Finn said. (He wasn't dumb. He knew you couldn't give a guy deep-fried food after heart surgery. He also knew Rachel loved to make something called Apple Fries. That's why he wasn't being specific with her dad.)

Leroy laughed a little until he coughed. "Deal." He held his hand out to Finn. "And in case I haven't said it yet, welcome to the family, son. Rachel's lucky to have you and so are we."

"Thanks," Finn said, standing up and then shaking Leroy's hand. He just wasn't sure how much Rachel would agree—with either point; the lucky or the having. He tried to stop himself before his mind went to a dark place, but he wasn't really successful.

He wasn't sure she was onboard with him being welcome in the family, either.

* * *

><p>He didn't actually call her afterward because it was like three a.m. on her clock by the time he said goodbye to both dads (and didn't stick around to hear Leroy give Hiram the news.) He just sent her a text message before he pulled out of the hospital parking lot.<p>

_Your dad agreed to have the bypass if I bring him fries afterward. I didn't say what kind of fries. Hope you're getting some sleep._

He was driving back to Columbus from Dayton and didn't see her reply, so he didn't answer her question.

_Thanks. Love me?_


	9. Nine: I Love You But

**A/N: ** I owe so many thanks at this point that I'm not sure I can remember who has helped and in what ways with this part. There are so many things that are different about it that I don't even know where to begin. If I'm going chronologically, it goes like this; **Leo (wood-u-like-2-no)** thanks for keeping the guys in check or trying to. And for encouraging one entire scene in particular. **Lizzie (Paceismyhero) **thanks for suggesting…physicality? I guess that's the best way to explain it. **Jen (wants2beawriter)** for making sure my cheese wasn't too cheesy. **Laura (tjcrowfoot)** for overall beta/proofing /comforting/making sure it didn't suck. Last but not least, **holygoof101 **for checking my medical facts.

Finally thank you to everyone reading, replying, reviewing, and conversing. The last couple of chapters' results have introduced me to new people and it's been amazing. We should do it again sometime. Like right now for instance.

**Disclaimers: ** I don't own and I'm not affiliated with Glee. I do own a few of the characters listed, but if you don't know who I'm talking about you haven't read the rest of the story and you need to go back. I also do not own, but I DO love the song used ,** I Love You But I Don't Know What to Say **by **Ryan Adams **from his super amazing top-5-of-2011-in-my-world album, **Ashes and Fire.**

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter Nine: I Love You But I Don't Know What to Say<strong>

Finn was looking over the chords Craig had scribbled down on the page along with some words, along with the words, and he was kind of half-assing something that might possibly work with it on the snare drum. Then again, he couldn't remember exactly what rhythm Craig had used singing the song so that wasn't helping. He was about to turn to the other guy and ask him to do it again when his phone rang.

"Okay, you've got to stop balancing that shit on the cymbal for fun when you're working," Brandon gasped out. "It's fucking loud when Rachel calls you."

Finn's eyes narrowed as he reached out and grabbed his phone. "It's not Rachel, it's my brother." He chucked the notepad at Brandon's head. "Play that again while I see what he wants. It'll just be a second if he wants to discuss ring color."

"_What_?" Brandon said, rubbing where the corner of the notepad had hit him in the forehead.

"Hello?" Finn answered.

"Hey, what are the chances you've watched any sort of news program today?"

"What's less than zero?" Finn asked, running his finger over the cymbal and listening to Brandon and Craig going through the song with one ear. Yeah, that was _totally_ different than what he'd remembered.

"Well, you _should_."

"Why don't _you _just tell me the news," Finn said. "Since you have me on the phone and all." Finn sighed. The last time Kurt had called and said something of that nature, it was because Alexander McQueen had been in a car accident in Germany. _Who cared_?

"Are you sitting down?"

"Yes, Kurt," Finn said with about ten percent more patience than he actually had.

"Well, there's an office building in London that caught on fire."

"Okay, so?" Finn said, his automatic denial kicking in even as his heartbeat sped up and he stopped fiddling with the drum and stopped listening to what Brandon and Craig were doing.

"Well, it was news because it's apparently happening _now_. And they've shut down a number of thoroughfares that have trapped spectators at Wimbledon."

"Again…_so?_"

"Have you talked to Rachel? I think it's her office building."

Finn snorted a little. "Okay, look…I'm right in the middle of band practice. We find out on Monday if we have to do an EP and we'll have to be in the studio by the following weekend with three more songs so…"

"This is not another example of my being dramatic or what you term 'wasting time'."

It was the first time Finn had heard actual panic in Kurt's voice. "Why?"

"They said Matt Jones is missing," Kurt said. "Following a fire in _his_ office that's still actually burning. That's the producer she's working with, correct?"

Finn didn't answer 'cause he was too busy trying to manage with breathing and sitting up straight and not having a heart attack since his heart was doing its level best to leave his body entirely.

"Finn."

"Yes, that's him…" Finn said, distracted from the conversation even as his mind was starting to race. He was at a garage. There was nothing…he had an aircard. His laptop was in his car. He looked over at Brandon and Craig, who both scowled when they realized he was leaving. "What else did they say?"

"Umm…" Kurt said. "I don't know. The story was short. Sam's kind of an MSNBC junkie so he was watching it and…"

"Focus," he said simply. "What else?"

"Just they were trying to get more details, I just thought…"

"…that I'd want to know," Finn finished quietly. "I haven't talked to her since yesterday, Kurt. What…have you?" He only had half of his attention on the conversation as he slung the laptop bag over his shoulder and re-locked his car.

Kurt snorted out a laugh. "Are you serious? She hasn't talked to me since your festival on Saturday. I think she's still mad, even though you said she's not."

"I haven't talked to her," Finn repeated. He hurried into the garage and opened his laptop right on top of his snare drum, ignoring Brandon's scoff of disbelief even though he heard it well enough because that asshole was _loud_ when he wanted to be.

"What the hell are you doing, fuckface? We're in the middle of _rehearsal_."

"Yeah, well…" Finn replied. "I'm calling timeout."

"_What_?" Kurt said.

"Nothin'…" Finn said. "I'll call you back, okay? I'm gonna try to call her."

"I already tried that. It goes straight to voicemail."

"Well…maybe she'll actually answer for me," Finn said; he didn't tell Kurt he doubted it because they'd barely been speaking, he was still kinda mad, and...well. Those details weren't important for Kurt to have. Not to mention the harassment was just sort of second nature at this point and he barely even realized the bite in his words because Kurt didn't react to it. "I'll call you back, man."

"Okay," Kurt said quietly. "I really, really hope everything is okay."

Finn remembered his heart was still beating but it might stop. Like, it was seriously trying to. "Me too. Bye."

"Finn!" Brandon said. "C'mon, man!"

"Just wait," Finn said. "That was…" he looked down at his phone and single-handedly keyed in Rachel's speed dial number (it was 5) on his phone. He held it to his ear and waited for it to connect while the homepage pulled up on his laptop and the aircard beeped that it was actually working. He held the phone with one hand and typed with the other, kind of wanting to throw up when he typed in _London office fire_ and it immediately pulled up like seven hits from the AP and Reuters that were all labeled within minutes of his search.

About then, he heard Rachel's voice on her voicemail recording. He clicked on a headline that said _Several missing and several injured in fire, spectators still stranded_. He stomped his frustration when the voicemail beeped, and the stomp sounded deep and hollow on the bass drum, dumping his laptop a little into his lap and making him fumble to catch it.

"Rachel…hey, babe it's me…it's…please call me. Please tell me you're okay. I'm sorry I missed your text and whatever, just _please_ call me as soon as you get this, okay? I really love you…like I really, really love you and I'm freaking out now so… just call me."

"What the fuck is going on?" Brandon asked, already moving. Finn's hand was shaking too much to redirect the mouse as he scanned the news story. It was short—too short for him. He needed to know more. He needed to know if Rachel was okay.

"Um…I don't know," he said. Brandon took the computer from his lap and looked at the story on the screen.

"So what if there's a fire?" Brandon said. "It's like half a world away and…"

"Rachel _lives_ half a world away," Finn said quietly. "That's _her_ office."

"How sure are you?"

"_I've been there_," Finn said sharply, seeing the picture of the office building with smoke coming out of it—even flames in some windows—and automatically going over the inside in his mind; he'd studied the building from the ground in front of it, looking at the numbers and hoping they matched what was on the text from Rachel; he'd smiled at the doorman and the receptionist as he walked past and thought about how terrible the gold paint on the wall behind her was; he'd held Rachel's hand in the stairwell as their steps echoed on the concrete and kissed her in front of the door to her floor. That time, she had been all he'd really seen or felt in that place, her presence totally invading his senses like it usually did. But now…now when he thought back on it, all he saw were flaws in the structure and reasons she could be hurt or _worse_: crowded but bustling streets where someone could run out of a burning building and get hit by a car…narrow stairways that wouldn't allow more than four people on the stairs at a time. Too many people, not enough space, and doors that were too heavy for someone as small as Rachel to open if she had people pressing against her.

Funny how he hadn't noticed those things before now. He kind of wondered how accurate the memory was.

"Fuck, man. I'm sure she's fine. I mean… what are the chances?"

"I haven't… we're… what a stupid fight. A stupid waste of time and now they're and…" Finn was mumbling in his own world, thinking of a thousand times he should've called her and now…now he couldn't get a hold of her, now when it counted most. How many times could he have called in the last five days and she would've been _so_ happy to talk to him? He should've just… whatever. He couldn't undo it. He called her again. It went right to voicemail. He hung up without leaving a message, but immediately pulled his phone down and started trying to send her a text message, but his hands were shaking and his vision was starting to get too blurry.

Craig was there and took the phone out of his hand. "What were you trying to say?"

"Fuck…I don't know," Finn said. He ran his hands over his face. He could hear the message Craig was typing out—sort of. Blood was rushing through his ears and he could barely hear anything. It was like _their_ life was flashing through his head and it was too short. There wasn't enough of it; there could never be enough of it.

Craig took the laptop from Brandon, then set Finn's phone on top of it. He motioned to Josh, who was just entering the garage from a drink run and bathroom break, and turned to Finn. "What's the first song you ever learned? The louder the better."

"What?" Finn said, blowing out a long breath.

"The first song you ever learned to play. What was it?"

"Ummm…" Finn took in another deep breath, gulping air like it was water. "Back in Black."

"AC/DC… _nice," _Josh said. He was moving around the room quickly, setting water bottles at everyone's feet. "What are we doing?"

"We're playing Back in Black," Craig said simply. "On his count." Josh just nodded and moved over to his normal spot, picking up the bass from where he'd left it.

"Craig…" Finn protested.

"Fine, then on _my_ count," Brandon said, now that he had his guitar situated. To his credit, Finn only dropped the first few beats before he started in and just pounded the _shit_ out of his kit. They took turns yelling out songs as the previous one faded, playing in a continuous stream of the most random shit ever—more AC/DC, a little Kiss, Pantera, a Justin Timberlake song they had _all_ harassed Brandon about once, some Dave Matthews Band, Queens of the Stone Age …when Brandon decided to be an asshole and yell out "Hot For Teacher", Finn stopped; but at least he was laughing.

"Yeah, maybe if you want to fucking _kill me_," Finn said, struggling to get the words out as he was breathing hard and dripping sweat despite having lost his shirt at some point. "I need a break anyway."

"Fine, take a break…" Brandon said. "But don't touch your fucking phone. Just walk out the door and take a piss or whatever."

Finn looked at him with an unreadable glance but didn't even move toward his laptop, which had long since gone into sleep mode to preserve battery power, or his phone.

As soon as he was gone, Josh looked at the other guys confusedly. "What…what's going on?"

"Apparently, Rachel's office building caught on fire," Craig said quietly from the corner, where he was pinching a water bottle between his fingers and looked like he was just between drinks. "There's, like, _no_ news about it so I wanted to wear him out."

Josh nodded. "That sucks." He looked back toward the door. "Hope everything's okay."

* * *

><p>During Finn's third break, and again when he was forbidden by Brandon from looking at the phone that hadn't rung, Josh set his bass down. His fingertips were a little sore from the metal strings and, like Craig and Brandon, he was down to just a tanktop but still hotter than hell.<p>

"I'm gonna go check on him," Josh said simply. The drummer had been gone for almost 20 minutes and they all knew he wasn't actually in the bathroom in the next building. The other guys nodded their agreement and continued drinking their water (because they needed at least a ten-second break from beer so they didn't puke with as hot as it was.) Josh grabbed a couple of water bottles and headed outside.

The air outside was a little better, even if they had the door and all the windows open to their little building. It was still hot and just kind of a miserable summer day. Josh's thoughts flashed a little to what it might be like for Rachel; he had _no idea _what the summer in London would be like, but it didn't matter how hot it was outside if the building you were stuck in for whatever reason was burning. A shudder rolled through him and he shut that train of thought down; he felt really terrible for Finn 'cause he was knew Finn wouldn't be able to stop thinking shit like that so easily.

Finn was leaning against the side of building, almost like he was sitting in a chair that wasn't there. His face was in his hands and Josh could _see_ him breathing before he could hear it. And well, once he could _hear_ what Finn was actually doing…it wasn't any better.

"Hey," Josh said, still walking from a safe distance. He didn't want to _scare_ the guy. Once he got a little closer, he reached out the cold water. "Thought you could use a drink."

Finn's face was bright red and there was really no way of telling what was sweat and what was crying and whatever else. Josh frowned. Finn unscrewed the lid and poured a long drink into his mouth. Instead of re-capping the mostly empty bottle when he was done, though, he stepped away from the building, lined up, then threw it as hard as he could, letting out a grunt that sounded painful as he released it.

Josh watched it sail right into the back of Brandon's truck and then fought the urge to laugh. The truck wasn't particularly close to where they were standing though, and Josh thought it might be easier to go near any subject other than Rachel at this moment.

"Remind me why you didn't play ball in college again?" He asked, leaning against the side of building where Finn was settling back in, still breathing hard.

"I stayed in Lima for the first part. Got a scholarship there for some other stuff. I wasn't in Columbus at the right time and… well… you know how many people wanna be quarterback. No way I would've even gotten on."

Josh just nodded. "Coulda tried, though."

"I could've done a lot of shit differently…" Finn said. He scoffed a little and shook his head. "Doesn't change a fucking thing at this point."

"I wish I knew if she was gonna be okay and I could just tell you," Josh said.

"I wish you did, too," Finn said. The breath he let out was half crying and half just breathing. "I…she's…there's…and I'm losing…it's _two _of them. I…it's not just Rachel."

"Who else?" Josh asked, confused.

"She…um…" Finn sniffled again. "I think she's pregnant."

"Oh, _shit_."

Finn looked over at him, still breathing through his mouth because his nose wasn't working. "That's one way to put it. She hasn't told me she is but…but now…" he kicked at a rock and Josh raised his eyebrow again. The rock wasn't small and it didn't stay close; it also didn't go toward their cars so that was a good thing. "What am I supposed to do if she gets hurt or…or… I'm not even fucking _there_…I'm here like this is more important to me than she is… than they…" he lost it again and, bent against the building again, buried his face in his hands.

Josh was very quiet when he replied and he wasn't sure Finn would even be able to hear him, but he didn't know what else to do; he'd never seen Finn so broken-down and so not caring who saw him that way. Even when Rachel had first left, it hadn't been like this, and it had been pretty fucking clear something was wrong with him then. This was off the charts.

"I dunno what to say," Josh admitted. "If it was Katie and me…I… I don't even know what I'd want to hear so… you… you're done. I'm going to go get your shit and drive you home and we'll figure out what to do with your car later."

Finn didn't really say anything and Josh didn't expect him to; he went back into the garage and just quietly muttered that Finn was done as he gathered up Finn's crap and the mumbled an explanation about how done the poor guy really was before he left. Finn was already slumped in the seat of Josh's car when Josh got out there, looking absently out the window. Josh tossed Finn's phone into Finn's lap as he got in, and saw Finn half-heartedly check it, but otherwise Finn didn't move or talk at all. Josh couldn't blame him 'cause sometimes there just weren't words anyway.

* * *

><p>"What in the name of God are you doing?" Katie asked, walking slowly into the living room. She'd gone to run some stuff over to the school, now that painting was done, and hadn't expected to see either Finn or Josh anytime soon (they were all freaking out over having three more songs ready for an EP even if they didn't know anything yet.) Instead, Finn was sprawled on the couch, with the television he never watched turned on; it was turned onto MSNBC of all things. His laptop was at his side and his hand was absentmindedly resting on the mousepad at the bottom of the laptop keyboard. His other hand held the television remote and his phone in a stack on his opposite knee.<p>

"Trying to decide if I could earn enough money donating a kidney to get to London tonight."

Her eyes shifted to the clock above the television. "I'm guessing it's not a money issue but a _time_ issue."

"Probably," he said simply. She perched next to him on the couch and saw the news story switch to a picture of what looked like absolute chaos in some random city. Only it wasn't totally random, according to the caption on the bottom of the screen.

_Two confirmed dead, several missing after London office fire _

Finn tensed and sat up all at the same time, his finger clicking at the volume and only catching part of the reporter's verbal comments.

"…have just received word that the fire is declared 'out' at least. They've still advised the roads nearby will be shut down for several hours; the train is not running through this part of town because the tracks are very nearby and they're trying to minimize traffic into this part of the city as the search continues for missing office workers who reportedly…"

He sat back and turned the volume down. As he sat the remote back on his leg, he separated it from his phone and tilted the phone up to see no missed calls or messages. He sighed and set it back down.

"That's Rachel's office, Katie," he said, his voice low and intense. "I can't get a hold of her. Her agent hasn't heard anything. I think I might've sent her dad to an early grave when I called to tell them. I don't…there's just nothing I can _do_."

"Oh, _Finn_," she breathed. She was watching him closely. He hit some button on the remote and it flipped to CNN.

"They made me play like thirty six songs or something and then sent me home. I'm so tired," he said. "But it's not like I can go to sleep. I just…I wish my head was tired. I wish…I wish she would just fucking _call._"

"Maybe…maybe she left so fast she got out but her phone was inside. Maybe she left her phone at home. Maybe…"

"…maybe she's hurt and I'm not there," he said. He sniffled and she had a suspicion he might be crying but she wasn't going to look over. She could feel the tension radiating off him in waves even though he was fully reclined against the couch. It was like a low buzz that surrounded him. She was tired just _sitting_ by him. "Or maybe she's one of the ones who's dead. Laney said…Laney said they're still switching everything over from us getting married. I don't…they don't have our wedding license or whatever it is yet so I'm not official. Like, if something happens to her they won't tell me. They can't tell me."

"Who is _Laney_?" Katie said, reaching over and taking the phone and the remote from his leg. She flipped the television off and looked over to see his open-mouthed protest and yeah, he was crying.

"Her agent," he said. "I was watching that."

"You were just driving yourself crazy, Finn." She turned on the end of the couch to face him. "You know the only real information you're going to get is a phone call and you don't want to try flying there _now_ in case you're on a plane when she finally does call. She _will_ call."

"You don't know that."

"You're right," Katie said. "But I _do_ know you need some sleep and if you wait until night, it won't happen." Her eyes flicked to the clock again; it was almost six o'clock. "What time is it in London? It was still daylight on the picture but…"

"They've been showing the same picture," he said. His voice was still eerily…steel. "It's almost eleven at night."

"Okay," Katie said. She pushed herself up off the couch and went into the kitchen. They had one cabinet that was the designated liquor cabinet; that's right where she went. She grabbed a shot glass that was a little larger than average and filled it to the brim with the nastiest thing in the cabinet. Like typically she wouldn't even touch that shit with a ten-foot pole.

She got back into the living room and he had the laptop in his lap and his hands kind of pulling at his hair.

"What?"

"Four. There are four people dead," he said. "It just jumped from two to four…God.. what if she had to _jump_? I mean… her office doesn't have a window, but Matt's does and I didn't even _look_ like…she's on the fourth floor and I don't know if… can you just… what if she had to jump? She's like _tiny_ and…"

"Finn!" Katie cut him off. There were still tears in his eyes and desperation in his voice and it was just so hard to watch because there was nothing they could do. She held out the shot. "Drink this."

"What is it?"

"Jager," she said simply. He took the glass but didn't drink.

"Gross," he protested. "No."

She pressed her lips together and put her hands on her hips. "If you don't drink it, I swear to God I will climb in your lap and pour the bottle of it down your throat."

He did the shot quickly, his face crumpling into a grimace. She raised her eyebrows and looked maybe even a little impressed.

"Shut up, I totally believed you would dump a bottle of it down my throat," he said. His voice was still choked. He got up to take the glass in to the kitchen. "Sorry…I'm just. I'm gonna be kind of a mess 'til I know something. And then I'll probably be on a plane."

Katie nodded. "I know and I can't even imagine," she said. She stopped him in the doorway with a hand on his arm. "And you know if you need it, me and Josh will be the first ones on that plane with you, right?"

Finn latched onto her in a tight and totally uncharacteristic hug. For her part, she was totally stunned and couldn't do anything but eventually get her arms around him and hold on when he totally fell apart, mumbling something into her hair about a stupid fight and how he might never get to talk to his wife again.

* * *

><p>He knew he was going to fall asleep 'cause he was totally exhausted. He'd turned up the volume on his phone as loud as it would go before he plugged it into the wall because he wanted to make sure he'd hear if it rang or notified or did anything more than just, like, exist.<p>

Before he fell asleep, though, he tried one last time; he sent her some song lyrics that had been floating through his head all afternoon, hoping she would hear and she would answer. He didn't even really care if they stumped her and he wasn't positive where they'd come from (unless it was another one of those super slow songs from Craig's piano lessons before all the stuff with Rachel happened), as long as they made her say or do something to tell him she was okay.

_I promise you I will keep you safe from harm. And love you all the rest of my days. When the night is silent and we seem so far away; I love you and I don't know what to say._

* * *

><p>With help from the shot of Jager (followed by others in semi-regular intervals, plus some Xanax they probably shouldn't have given him) and the hyper-emotional constant baseline, Finn actually slept for the better part of the next two days. He didn't sleep <em>well<em>, plagued by bouts of mumbling, tossing and turning, and even yelling in his sleep, but he slept at least and Katie kept her own hand leashed to his phone, periodically answering texts from the same few names she recognized—Kurt, Mom, Berry Dad #1, Berry Dad #2. The band continued to practice half-heartedly without their drummer, and no one bothered to fill him in on even the little bit of news they could find. There wasn't much, but even what was there wasn't particularly encouraging.

No one was listed as missing anymore, and a total of five people had died. They said twenty-two had been injured, and seventeen taken to the hospital with various injuries, but were not giving any sorts of statistics about them. The fire had been started, directly below Rachel's office in the office of a political action group, by an opposing group making a statement. They had reportedly used particularly harmful chemicals to aid in starting the fire and it had rendered the building a total loss when all was said and done.

Overall, life was going on. People had talked about how the interruption to train service had left spectators stranded at the last Wimbledon match of the year until Finn's friends were ready to punch the spectators in the face for discussing their inconvenience, but even then it was only on the British news outlets they'd scoured on the web for details. Katie kind of marveled at how something that seemed so huge in their lives (really, more Finn's life and only hers by extension) was barely even on the radar of anyone or anything else.

The second morning after the fire, Finn walked slowly into the kitchen. It was Saturday now and he'd been holed up in his room—kind of sleeping but mostly worrying—for the better part of two days. He hadn't eaten that she knew of, despite several attempts to force-feed him, and she'd had his phone the entire time. The only thing he'd kept in his room was his iPod and it wasn't one of the ones that would connect to the internet or do anything 'extra'. She kind of thought he'd been listening to the songs Rachel had written about him over and over, but she didn't really have any proof.

"Morning, sunshine," she said cautiously. "There's still coffee if you want some."

"Thanks," he said in a rough whisper. He went for milk instead, pulling the carton out of the fridge before reaching in the cabinet for a cup. "Anything?"

"No," she admitted. "Sometimes no news is good news, right?"

He let out a short, breathy laugh that wasn't really a laugh. "Quit trying to be, like, _cheery_. It really doesn't suit you."

"Not sure moping suits you, either," she said. This time at least his laugh was kind of real.

"Well…I decided something."

She leaned against the countertop with her arms folded against her chest. Humor was _much_ easier with the two of them. "Didja now? Enlighten me."

"I don't think she's dead," he said quietly.

"Finn…"

"No, just listen. There's this…I dunno…" he took a drink from the milk he had poured. "Just this _thing_. And I can always tell…like it's…it's kinda weird."

"The thing tells you she's not dead," Katie said dryly. She put her hand to his forehead. "I mean, we waited hours and all, but maybe we shouldn't have given you Xanax and alcohol in the same…year."

He swatted her hand away from his face. "I've just always been able to _feel_ when something was wrong or when she was super happy or … or… I don't really know how to explain it. It's weird. But I don't think she's dead. I think I panicked, like, 'cause she was panicking but…"

"You're right; I think you cracked," she said. They both heard his phone ring, like with a certain ring tone, and stared at each other. He totally knocked his cup of milk over and she didn't care. She was glad for the distraction of cleaning it up when he went to answer the phone that was sitting on the coffee table in the living room.

His phone said it was her; the ringtone said it was her. His heart pounded in his chest. He licked his lips a couple times and tried a deep breath, but he wasn't sure how much good it actually did.

"Hello?" He answered.

"Finn?"

He was only pretty sure it was her. Her voice sounded very, very different. But it was something in the way she said his name. He dropped down onto the couch.

"Rachel?" He asked. Sue him for making sure.

"Hi, babe," she said. "I'm…I….something happened to me."

He let out a hard laugh. "Yeah, I… I heard."

"How?"

"It was on the _news_," he said. "Like…MSNBC."

"Why were you watching MSNBC?" She asked, her words still coming slowly.

"Because there was a fire in your office," he answered like that should actually explain it. "You're…I…"

"I'm okay," she said eventually.

"You don't sound okay."

"Neither do you," she countered.

"I'm probably gonna be sick when we hang up—which is gross 'cause I just drank some milk."

She laughed a little and it sounded like it hurt. He tried not to picture, like burns or whatever all over her body or… one of his students had been caught in a house fire and burned his hand and part of his arm trying to get out, and he'd had to have all this treatment and wear a special sleeve and…she couldn't go through that if he wasn't there to help her. He wanted to start looking for a flight, even while he was on the phone, but he couldn't make himself move. He couldn't even ask what, exactly, was wrong with her.

"I broke my voice," she said slowly. "I always wanted Santana's raspiness and…"

"It sounds terrible on you," he said and she laughed again. "What…what happened?"

"I…well…" she started. She let in a breath and God, he could _hear_ it. "There was so much smoke. And the doors locked weird and a bunch of us got stuck in a stairwell." She paused and took a couple of long breaths. "Some guy pulled the hinges out of the door and that's how we finally got out but…but it was so much _smoke_. It was like every breath just burned and…" she pulled the phone away as she coughed and then brought it back.

"Anyway, they brought me to the hospital and I don't really…I don't really remember that much of it. They put a tube in my throat and knocked me out and…" she was taking a break to breathe again. He hated it; his wife didn't have to stop and breathe. It just wasn't _her_. "And anyway…they took it out this morning. I'm so lucky… just so…I'm sorry I didn't call faster. I just couldn't…I was…"

"I'm so happy you called now," he said. "Are you…are you _really_ okay? Like—both of you?"

"Huh?" She said. She sounded tired. "What do you mean _both _of me?"

The stupid madness and not-speaking as much as he should've to her seemed like a different week, a different month… a different lifetime… shit, a whole different guy. "Kurt told me."

In a firm voice that sounded more like her than the rest of the phone call, she started demanding information. "Kurt told you _what_ exactly?"

"He said you're..._we're_…pregnant."

The coughing fit was long and violent and he totally cringed. It sounded painful; miserable actually. Her voice was a whisper when she spoke. "I'm not pregnant and I'm going to kill him."

"Oh you're… you're _not_? Did…I don't…"

"Kurt told me to take a pregnancy test because I was sick," she admitted. "I didn't want you to feel guilty for being gone so I didn't tell you I was sick and then the test was negative and…I had a doctor's appointment at some point but…" she paused and breathed a little. "I think I missed it, but the doctor here this morning said my symptoms were all stress-related and there were a few things on my blood test that correlated. I was going to tell you about it when I knew what it was."

"I was mad before…" he admitted. He felt like a jackass. "I was mad you told Kurt and not me. And that's why I didn't even say I love you in that text and…and then I missed the question and that was… _I love you_. I love you so much."

"Thank you," she said. "And I'm sorry. I love you, too."

"You need to go so you can rest," he said. It wasn't a question. And he was totally telling her what to do. And he thought she probably ought to get used to it. "Text me anything else I need to know, okay? And I want to know everything."

"Okay," she agreed. "I love you."

"I love you too, babe."


	10. Ten: Learn to Distinguish False Alarms

**A/N: **Writer's block sucks. Nothing worse than knowing what you want to do but not having the words to do it. Thank you for all the checking in, all the well-wishes, all the support, and all the attempted help. Every last one of you is fantastic to me and I'm so glad I finally have this (shorter than normal) chapter to share. I can only hope it lives up to the wait. Let me know, yeah? Oh, and thanks to **Wendi(holygoof101)** for help with the medical details. I'm sure it's not completely accurate but I hope it's close enough.

**Disclaimer: Don't own, haven't magically acquired, blah blah blah. What Finn texts Rachel at the end is sort of mostly like an actual song but I'm not telling you any more about it yet for reasons I'll explain in the story. Chapter title is also taken from that song, so...**

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter Ten: Learn to Distinguish From False Alarms<strong>

The details that came in over the next couple days were pretty intense; she couldn't Skype him because she left her computer in the office and it was obviously gone. She had been pretty good about texting whenever she wanted to tell him something because it physically hurt to hear her voice and he told her that; it didn't _totally_ stop her from calling and he was glad. He had looked into airfare so he could get there, but it wasn't doable at all. Plus, he still had an obligation to the band and she was in the ICU; he couldn't even get in to be with her because they were still waiting for the 'official' copies of the wedding license that proved they were married and they wouldn't let him in if he wasn't a member of her family. (Though suddenly, because of crap like this, being married seemed like the best idea ever.) He got her approval and ordered her a new computer, had it sent to their apartment, and listed his car for sale. He owned it outright and it would give him plenty of money to cover the one-way ticket on such short notice. He wasn't coming back from London after this until she was with him. That was just kind of a given.

She had been in the ICU since they intubated her (he was learning medical terminology now and also hated every second of it), and would remain there for at least a couple more days because she had pneumonia as a result of being on a ventilator. She could barely talk, let alone sing, and they had no idea how it would affect her future singing. It was a case where only time would tell how extensive the damage to her respiratory tract was even if they had no reason to think anything was permanent. He was still just thanking God she hadn't been burned or anything else on top of it.

The others in her office had made it out with various degree of injuries and smoke inhalation, but they were all mostly okay. They had lost the vast majority of the work they had done because, due to some bad luck, Rachel had taken both flash drives and her laptop to work with her that morning as they were preparing to start printing the official sheet music. Bridget had grabbed one of her notebooks as she left, Matt had grabbed a couple with overall production notes, but that was it; the rest of their work was gone.

"Click the button again," Brandon said.

Finn rolled his eyes over to the other guy. "Would you shut up?"

Brandon sighed. "Yeah, yeah, yeah—whatever. I know you don't give a shit if this happens for us because your goal is to record all the drum fills in one day and then be gone. I know. Click it!"

This time at least Finn rolled his eyes and laughed. The other guys in the band had been surprisingly patient with him and they were actually kind of open to the idea of auditioning for the musical in West End. His priorities had taken a swift kick to the ass in the last week and they all knew it; it meant that, for Day Job to stay together, they would all have to make sacrifices because he made it clear that, while he wanted to be involved, he was _not_ sacrificing being with his wife anymore. Largely, they were okay with that. They just had to see this other thing through first.

They were refreshing the radio station's website to see which bands had sold the most stuff and been voted the best by the audience from the previous weekend. There were only four out of eight bands moving on to record three more songs and so far they'd been in fifth place so they were right on the border of losing and 'I don't know'. The margin so far had been really, really narrow, too. That wasn't helping.

"You're too fucking slow, Hudson," Brandon said, reaching around Finn to tap on the mousepad on Josh's computer. Finn, Josh, and Craig were sitting on Josh's couch and Brandon was standing directly behind Finn, which made it easy for the two of them to start the slap fight. That's exactly what Finn did.

"Back the fuck off," Finn said, slapping Brandon's free hand with his as he clicked on the refresh button again.

The page took almost a full extra minute to load. The first thing any of them noticed was that the headline on the page had changed. All four of them breathed in at the same time and held it as Finn scrolled down.

They had placed third overall once the audience votes were counted. They were on to the next round.

It was like five o'clock on Monday and they had met at Josh's with the assumption (mostly on Brandon's part) they would progress. Finn smiled as he stood up, resting the laptop carefully on the coffee table before he started pulling away from the group.

"Hang on," Josh said to him as he disappeared into the kitchen. Finn knew where Josh was going—pregaming—and he didn't want to actually explain the feeling that washed over him when he saw the results, so he did what he was told. 'Cause hanging on was kinda the last thing he actually _wanted_ to do, or at least a close second after hanging _out_.

Life was such a fucking mess. Having more shit to do just kind of made it a _complicated_ fucking mess and he just…he knew he should be happy with their accomplishment like the other guys were. The problem was that he wanted to go home. At some point, because Rachel was there, he had started to consider London his home. He couldn't even say _some point_ like he didn't know exactly what had done it. He was honestly trying to decide, if they progressed further in the competition, if he might tell the guys they should start looking for another drummer. He didn't want to do it if she wasn't there with him. He didn't want anything else to happen while he was half a world away.

Her time was measured in vital statistics and breathing treatments for the time being. He wanted to be there with her for all of them. True, her dad was having his heart surgery that week and he had promised to actually be there. He had promised to get Rachel there, too, but she wasn't even allowed out of ICU with pneumonia, let alone allowed to fly five hours and then sit with her dad who was having open heart surgery. Even that promise he would trade, though, if it meant he could be with her. He was quickly getting to the point he would do anything to be there; he'd joked with Katie about selling a kidney but…

Josh was back and handing everyone a shot glass. He figured at the least it would take the edge off. Maybe. He tossed it back in time with Josh's toast, even though he missed the words, and blinked blankly when they started discussing where they wanted to go. For the first time ever, he didn't really want to go with them. Brandon turned to him for an opinion and Finn had to actually refocus his ears on the conversation.

"…wherever you think 'cause you always know the good places since Q worked at the high school."

Finn frowned. "Yeah, except it's been a while since I even talked to her or…y'know… _lived_ here so… I dunno." He kind of hoped Brandon had been asking about a bar on account of he wasn't paying attention. It didn't totally matter though because his answer was neutral.

"You okay?" Josh asked, quietly and off to the side while Brandon and Craig were busy outlining a pub crawl; it sounded ridiculous considering it was six in the evening on Monday in Columbus, but whatever.

Finn sighed and looked over at his friend. He hadn't bothered to fill anyone in on the small detail that Rachel wasn't actually pregnant, and it just occurred to him in that moment. He _had_ let them all know she was alive and something less than okay, but she would be fine. He'd also made no major secret of his desire to get to her quickly.

"Yeah," Finn said. "I just…"

"Kinda wanted us not to go on in the contest," Josh finished. "And you want to run and hide in your room and text Rachel."

"I was actually planning on _calling_ her," Finn said softly, keeping his voice low. He didn't want to draw extra attention to his not being excited. Part of him _was_—really. He knew it was a big accomplishment and an awesome thing for them. He just needed to get eyes and hands on his wife and help her until she was totally better because she'd just been through hell and he wasn't even there for her. The feeling he had failed her was really starting to overwhelm him and he just needed to get out; by _out_ he meant he needed to get out of Ohio, out of the U.S. He wanted to go home and he had no idea when the place he thought of as home had changed.

Brandon's phone rang and it became immediately obvious the caller was Colby Middleton, the guy they had hired on as a manager. Their performance, whether they ended up winning the contest or not, had gotten them some press and a lot more attention than they'd had before. It was good to have someone who could keep it organized. Colby was someone Brandon knew from…wherever…and he seemed like a good guy for the job. His call also provided enough of a distraction that Finn retreated to call Rachel.

The London Chest (yes, that's what the hospital was called and he was afraid he was losing his sense of humor because he hadn't even cracked a smile when he found out) typically didn't allow callers outside of a certain timeframe. They had been really understanding of his and Rachel's situation though, so he had no doubt her cell phone was available and on.

"Hello?" She answered, basically at the last possible second. He sat down on his bed and smiled. Also, he could breathe out so he did that, too.

"Hey," he said. He could almost feel his body relaxing a little. "How are you?"

She just groaned and he closed his eyes. He knew the antibiotics they'd given her for the pneumonia were making her maybe even sicker than the other stuff. Apparently, the particular kind of pneumonia she had was one of the kinds that people died from pretty regularly, so they'd promised she wouldn't be leaving the hospital any time soon.

"That doesn't sound good."

"I'm just frustrated," she admitted quietly. "I want to go home."

"I'm trying to get there," he said. He dropped his face into his free hand. "I really, really want to be there."

"I know," she sighed. "I just…the antibiotics they've been given me aren't working so they have to figure something else out I guess."

"I'm sorry," he replied immediately; those were the only words he could say and even those sounded pathetic.

She was quiet for a while. Just in the last two days, he'd gotten used to hearing different things in her breathing because her breathing was mostly loud at least. The silence almost made him come undone, but then she was talking and her voice was low. "I'm…I'm not very good at relying on other people."

He was pretty sure she was crying and his chest automatically felt heavy. "What do you mean?"

"The first time…" she was nearly breathless and it was taking her a second to get the words out. "The first time we were together…we were so co-dependent." Long pause. "I promised I would never be that way with anyone again."

He licked his lips and tilted his head to the side. She did this thing where she said something and that was just the start of what she really meant by it. It wasn't that she lied or that she even left stuff out on purpose, she just…she called it being _understated_. He called it being a pain the ass. But right now, he was looking for what she meant that could've been above and beyond what she was saying.

"I'm not sure I know what you mean," he admitted slowly.

"I broke my promise, Finn. I need you." She was definitely crying. She was whispering and her voice was even giving out entirely as she talked.

There were times in his life when he swore he'd felt his heart break. Like it was a for-real, physical thing. He was an idiot before because now he knew what it felt like.

He let out a deep breath and made a promise that he had no idea how he'd keep, but even when he said it, he knew he'd figure it out because she had really asked very little of him. "Then I'll get there," was all he said.

"I'm sorry," she whispered. "I'm so sorry."

"What are you sorry for?" He asked and he sniffled a little. "You didn't…you haven't done anything wrong. Fact is I should've been on a plane as soon as I knew something happened and I…I'm selfish."

"Finn," she sighed. "No you're not. I am."

"It's not selfish that you want me there," he said. "It's not. I will get there as fast as I can, okay?" His bedroom door wasn't all the way closed, but Katie opened it slowly and he saw it swinging out before he saw her. "I, um…I just. Give me until tomorrow morning my time, okay? I just have to make some arrangements." He waved Katie into the room and she entered slowly.

"Okay," Rachel agreed with a sniffle. He didn't want to wait to make arrangements or anything; he just wanted to _be _there. Long-distance, separation, whatever—not worth it.

"Will you have your doctor call and explain this stuff to me?" He asked. He didn't want to make her talk any more than necessary and he really didn't entirely understand.

"Sure," she agreed. She let out a long sigh. "I better go. It's late," she said.

He didn't want to let her go. He wanted to keep her on the phone forever. "Okay," he said. "I'll call you in a little bit when I have plans. I love you." His voice was soft enough he _knew_ it was making Katie uncomfortable to sit by him while he was being all…like…husbandly. Rachel returned the affection and he hung up and sighed.

"The guys are ready to leave," Katie said evenly. "They're just waiting on you." She patted his shoulder and rubbed his back a little and it really didn't make him feel better.

"I don't feel like going," he admitted. He shook his head and rubbed his hands over his face. "I didn't even tell her we're recording more…I just…she's so sad. I'm, like, really bad at being married because I don't even know what to say to her since I'm sad, too."

"As long as you care about how she feels, you aren't bad at being married," Katie said with a shrug. "But you know you need to go."

"I know, I just don't know _how_ to," he looked over at her. "I don't have the money for one thing. The only credit card I had was actually Quinn's and I…" he shook his head. "I mean, I'm not going there obviously and there's a guy who said he might want my car but that's gonna take time to come through if it works and I _can't_ leave them without a drummer to do this shit and—"

"—do you even remember how to breathe anymore?" Katie said, cutting him off in the middle of a panic attack waiting to happen. He'd never really had one before Rachel got hurt, but now…now he knew he didn't really want to have any ever again, so he kind of appreciated it. She was patting at his back but it was almost like she was smacking him around a little. "Most important thing first—getting you a ticket. Do you want to borrow money from me? I can spot you to get you there and then when that guy pays you or whenever, you can pay me back."

Finn shook his head. "I can't…I just. Thank you, Kate, but I can't take money from you."

"What about Rachel? Would she…"

He shook his head again. "I don't know. I mean, we haven't really talked much about money stuff yet and the plane ticket to get there and back before kinda wiped me out, you know? She made the arrangements to get us to New York and I have no idea how she did that…" the longer he talked, the worse he actually felt so he shut up.

"Okay, well…" Katie said briskly. "You're making this hard, so what's the next reason you can't go?"

"The band," he said. He held his phone up and looked over at her. "Oh. I mean, I didn't even tell Rachel about that."

Katie nodded. "Well…there's not much that can be done about that," she said with a sigh. "Josh has been really worried you were going to leave and…you know at least he would quit the contest altogether if you wanted to go, don't you?"

"I know, but I can't let him do that," he said sadly. "They've all worked hard for it and…and up 'til now I've been on board 'cause there's not much I wouldn't give up for it to work out. I think the band is what I want to do with my life." He let out a long breath because he hadn't admitted that to _anyone_. It was weird that he felt like admitting it to Katie now when he hadn't told Rachel any of it. Then again, he was pretty sure Rachel already knew. Katie stopped smacking at his back and was back to rubbing again. "I would give it up for her. I would leave right now if I could. What does that say about me?"

Her hand slips off him and lands in her lap. "It says you love someone more than yourself," she said quietly. "We really need to find a way to get you there." He just nodded and looked over at her with a small smile. "Well, okay. I'm going to go tell them to go without you because you're seriously no fun and then I'll start trying to hand you the solution to your own problem. Deal?"

She was already moving to leave the room, and he laughed a little even though he wanted to cry. In some ways, he knew she was annoying as hell. But in other ways, like when he was the guy that needed a push, he was really glad she was pushy. "Yeah, thanks." Plus, she was laughing as she walked out, too.

He hadn't gotten to the third good reason he couldn't go, and that was Rachel's dad. Leroy was scheduled for his surgery in two days (he'd been delayed a little because of the stress from Rachel's incident, which seemed backwards to Finn but the doctor had been intractable on it, insisting Leroy's already-solid chances of a good outcome were far more favorable if he was relaxed when he went into surgery) and Finn had promised Rachel would be there. It was pretty clear he would have to be the substitute since there was no way, even if she were out of the hospital, she would be there. He'd thought about trying to set up a Skype video chat of some kind, but she didn't have a computer. He still wasn't sure what he was going to do there and was kind of hoping Leroy would tolerate that promise being broken but have the surgery anyway.

It seemed so hopeless, honestly. He had buried himself under reasons he couldn't go without managing to change the fact that she needed him and he wanted—no, _needed_ –to be there for her. He dropped back onto the bed, his phone pressed to his chest just in case someone called him to offer a magic solution. Like…well, evaporating like in Harry Potter or something was clearly ridiculous. It seemed like he spent at least a week out of every school year convincing the 10-and 11-year-olds in his class that Hagrid wasn't going to magically come and get them and take them to a school that proved they were special; they had to figure it out on their own. That didn't mean he actually had the answers. It also didn't mean he didn't let his mind wander now, finding childlike solutions that he wished were true.

What if he had some sort of a time turner thing and could find a way to balance everything he wanted and everything he needed? What if he could just _go_ to Rachel without considering everything else? What if… what if… what if… what if the phone were some sort of magical transporting device and he could just, like, shrink down through the speaker and pop out on her side of the world? Then he could come back when the band needed him the same way. It would be fast, it would be free and it would be… magic.

He was pretty sure magic didn't exist or at least that he didn't believe in it. But _what if_…

It was fast, the words that came to him. It was impulsive and he didn't care. He needed to let it out. So he sat up and fired the words off to her before he could consider what it even meant or what he was doing.

_If I could I would shrink down, and fit through the holes, through the rubber and plastic. That'd be fantastic. I'd crawl through the phone lines and set off all the alarms if it meant I could land there in your arms._

He wasn't sure what it could possibly be, other than a promise to get there. He wanted to do it and he'd find a way. He didn't give up so easily; he never had and he sure as hell wasn't gonna start with this.


	11. Eleven: Tomorrow You'll Be Fine

**A/N: **Seriously sorry for the long wait for this chapter. When real life takes over, it does so in grand style. To anyone who is still reading, **please let me know** (even though I'm not getting notifications of anything anymore, apparently, so I'll check manually) and thank you for your patience and your attention and your kindness. I hope you all have an amazing year.

**Song credit:** **Come Home by Ryan Adams**

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><p><strong>Chapter Eleven: Tomorrow You'll Be Fine<strong>

Rachel looked over at the stupid breathing thing and fought the urge to knock it off the table. She had never thought it would be difficult to use her own lung power, condensed through a tube, to push a ball to the top of something; or to make the ball levitate for a set amount of time. The small machine wasn't close to the only thing frustrating her because it refused to just bend to her sheer will, but it was the only thing she could even take it out on while she was trapped in the hospital.

Other than a really weird text from Finn (she could only assume it was song lyrics but the Google on her phone hadn't found anything and he hadn't answered her when she asked what song it was), she had only talked to him once, very briefly the next morning his time and all he said was he still wasn't sure but he was 'working on it'. _ Funny how that failed to actually console her in any way_. She rolled her eyes again at the thought and checked her phone, even though after almost three days she had no hope she'd heard something else from him.

She pursed her lips together. When they had talked the day after her breakdown, he had told her the band was progressing in the competition and she heard a quiet resignation to his words, like he was trapped in Ohio by the revelation. Like maybe he wasn't coming. And then he had just not called again. It wasn't as though she was going anywhere anytime soon. He was the one running crazy and he hadn't called, so she kind of wondered what that meant. Was he totally just cutting and running?

They had assured her she'd be in the hospital for at least two more days even though the antibiotics were working this time. She was starting to feel a little better, a little less like she'd been punched in the chest with all the effort it took just to breathe, and now she just wished the other feelings would go away, too. It was starting to turn into panic and instead of feeling like broken lungs, was coming dangerously close to feeling like a broken heart. He didn't want to even make time to talk to her, let alone make time to come to her—and right after she'd swallowed a _lot_ more pride than one ever ought to have to and admitted she needed him.

She cast a baleful glance at the phone in her lap and fought the urge to call her dad again. Hiram had been wonderful to his only daughter, dutifully listening to her rough and raspy rambling as she emptied out her frustration at everything—her husband's absence, her job's peril, the feeling that she was starting all the way over with _everything_. And it wasn't even like she could go sing about it. She felt like everything worth anything was gone. And no, she wasn't sure which was worse – feeling depressed or knowing it was going to get worse with no possible solution. Her respiratory therapist had actually recommended speaking to a psychologist because she seemed 'down' and he thought she might have some sort of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.

She finally discarded the need to call her father based on two things. First was that it wasn't yet six a.m. in their world and, given Leroy had come out of surgery in the late afternoon (a little more than twelve hours previous, if she wasn't getting too bogged down in the time difference), she had to assume both her fathers were resting. Second, she supposed she had to get used to doing things on her own; this setback wasn't going to make her quit her job and she already knew at least that much. She picked up the breathing machine, not with the intent of throwing it, but the intent of practicing. Her first step would be getting the hell out of the hospital and strengthening her lungs was the fastest way to do that, so she'd go back to her former life philosophy – practice was the only way she could do something perfectly. And not doing it perfectly (as had been the case during a disastrous RT session this morning) only meant she needed to practice more. He'd encouraged her to do it as often as possible—hourly, even.

She didn't even notice the nurse that walked in because it wasn't like that was anything extraordinary; it happened almost constantly. They'd checked on her a little less now that she was sitting up and could function on her own as far as going to the restroom or whatever else, but it still wasn't odd for a nurse to come in during the middle of the day.

She _did_ notice the person following the nurse, though, and it probably would've been comical to watch the ball in the spirometer drop when she stopped concentrating on it and then dropped the whole thing entirely.

"Hey, babe," Finn said, almost pushing the poor nurse out of the way so he could get to Rachel and get his hands on her. The relief in just those two words was palpable and it brought tears to her eyes.

"You're here," she said simply. They were still hugging but she moved so he had a little room on the bed and he dropped down without letting her go even a little.

"I'm here," he agreed. "_Finally_."

"How is this possible? You were at the hospital when Daddy had his surgery and…"

He backed away from her a little bit and brushed his fingers over her forehead. "Yeah, but it's just 'cause my plane left right after that. I had barely enough time to get to the airport and I think your dad was gonna push me out the window in the fourth floor waiting area if it had left any later."

"What? Why didn't you call or text or …"

"I had to leave my phone off while we were at the hospital," he said. "And then I hurried to the airport and I forgot about it and who cares 'cause here I am. Plus my phone battery is like, beyond dead," he admitted. "So I couldn't call when I landed and…and yeah. Here I am." He kissed her forehead and hugged her to him again. She could _almost_ smell him, but she tried so hard to breathe him in that she started coughing a little (a lot) and had to pull away.

He watched her with a frown, letting his hand fall to rest on her blanketed thigh as she coughed and it grew a little more violent before it tapered off, sounding like she almost got tired of it. His eyes landed on the thing she'd been using when he walked in and he picked it up curiously, looking at it without asking a question until she was done.

"What's this?"

"A spirometer," she said simply. "I have to practice breathing into it to rebuild my lung capacity."

He just nodded and reached out to set it on the same table it had been on before she started. "Oh," he finally added. He looked over at her with a look she could honestly only describe as a dirty look and his voice was lower when he answered, too. "I can think of a few ways to do that," he admitted. He leaned forward to kiss her gently. He pulled away eventually, like maybe he didn't really want to, and she settled back against her bed.

Breathing exercises and premature heartbreak were exhausting and it all sort of slid into her at once.

"So start from the last time I talked to you and tell me _everything_," she requested.

He grinned and took her hand once she was settled because that was the mostRachel-like thing she'd said in several days. "Okay, um. I had flowers but they wouldn't let me bring them up. The nurse said I was sweet but then she took them out of my hand."

She laughed and it faded into a cough and she closed her eyes a little. It was like now that he was here, she could rest. His hand was warm in hers and his voice was warm over her and she thought maybe she could relax and it wasn't so just hopeless.

"Anyway…um. Well, I guess you called your dad after I talked to you and told you about the band going on in the contest and you were really sad and he said…" she could hear him swallow a little even though her eyes were closed. "He told me I was failing you and that it was unacceptable."

She sighed and dragged her eyes open. "Oh, I…that's not what I said."

"Maybe not, but he wasn't wrong," he said. He gave her hand a squeeze. "So he shoved a plane ticket in my hands and then took my car keys because some guy is probably buying my car at the beginning of next week and said we'd call it a trade. And the flight left right after Leroy's surgery."

"What about the band contest?"

He squeezed her hand again. "Oh, yeah um my part of that's done. I recorded three songs in two days."

She let out a disbelieving squeak of a laugh. "You…so let me get this." He waited patiently while she breathed in slowly. He frowned when she was finally sniffly enough from the low-level crying that she pulled the cannula out of her nose. "You talked to me, recorded, spent time with my dads, sold your car, and then flew here? In three days?"

"And I packed up the rest of the stuff I don't have here and got it ready to ship," he said.

"When did you sleep?"

"Ummm….." he hesitated. "Looking at you, I'm gonna guess that'll happen in five minutes or so."

She nodded and tugged on his hand as she slipped the tube back into her nose. "Yes. Let's do that." Her eyes were already closed but she heard his bag hit the floor and felt the bed shift as he laid down next to her with his head on her stomach and his legs curled up as tight as he could get them. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she wasn't relieved to know they could both fit into a hospital bed, but she wasn't going to dwell on it or think of anytime it might be necessary knowledge in the future.

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><p>Getting her discharged from the hospital wasn't the hard part. Getting her home from the hospital—not the hard part. Getting her to sit still and let him take care of her the way he was supposed to and the way he wanted to? That was<em> so <em>the fucking hard part.

She needed to clean the apartment. She wanted to keep the clothes she'd been wearing during the fire even though they smelled like a campfire so bad he was afraid it would, like, infect the entire closet. And that was coming from him, the guy who had lived out of a gym locker for most of high school and big chunks of college, and in a room she complained smelled like feet. She wanted to cook him dinner. It was sweet, he argued, but he had survived for close to a decade without her cooking him dinner; it could wait a couple of weeks until she felt better and was back on her feet. He knew she was grateful he was home, but really, all he needed was for her to jump him and it would be fine.

(Which she's done as soon as they were home and she (they) had showered in her (their) own shower.)

He finally got her to lay down once the cough syrup they gave her kicked in. Apparently, hydrocodone was one substance that counteracted Rachel's personality to the point she would succumb to anything and in his world, 'anything' included sleep at that point. He would never understand how she had to _give in_ to get to sleep. She just fought to stay awake which he didn't necessarily get all the time. Whatever. He was busy making carrot chowder when his mom called and yeah, he wanted to take care of his wife but no, he hadn't really thought about how that would possibly include cooking for a _vegan_.

"Hey, mom," he said, balancing his phone carefully as he added the chopped celery into the big pot.

"Hey, Finn," she echoed. "Thanks for calling me to let me know you landed."

"Ugh, sorry." He put the lid on the pot and turned away to wipe his hands on a towel. "I got here fine and my phone was dead and I went straight to the hospital and then…" he leaned back against the stove a little. "…I haven't done anything really but I feel like I got my ass handed to me."

"So where are you now?" She asked. He couldn't hear anything in the background and he wondered if today was a day off work for her. He'd ask in a minute. He felt kind of like a bad son for not even knowing. Let alone not calling his mom when he landed on a different continent. He'd have to get her something really kickass for Mother's Day next month….if he had a job by then.

"Home," he sighed. "They discharged her yesterday."

"Well that's good," Carole said. "So why are you exhausted? Or do I even want to know?"

He rolled his eyes a little. "No, she's not…" he lowered his voice just in case. Their apartment was tiny and with his luck, she wasn't actually asleep. "She's not the easiest person to just, like, take care of. She kind of fights me every step of the way."

There was some rustling against the phone and a really long pause. "I would think she'd love a doting husband. She's always kind of loved having your full attention."

"Are you laughing at me?" He asked. There was something in her voice.

"No…_no_," she said firmly and she totally _was_ laughing at him. "You are just a guy who needs to be needed, and you managed to fall in love with some really independent women. You have to admit that it's amusing."

"It's _frustrating_," he summed up. "But she's home and she's getting better and that's all that matters to me at this point. I'm just glad she's gonna be okay." He knew the relief in his voice was palpable but he was talking to his mom. He was allowed to be annoyed, frustrated, relieved, tired, or whatever else he wanted.

"We all really are, sweetheart," she agreed. "I sent something over to her fathers as well to let them know we're thinking of them; any idea how Leroy Berry is doing?"

Finn nodded a little. "Yeah. Um, Rachel's new computer came the first day I was back so we got it all set up and she talked to him on Skype. Honestly, she looks worse than he does." He shrugged and then moved quick as he felt the heat from the stove seeping through his jeans pocket where he was leaning a little too close to the burner. "I think she's gonna try to call him when she wakes up. I know she wants to."

"I'm not sure how to take that, her looking worse than her father who just had open heart surgery," Carole said lowly. "I mean, she really is my daughter for all intents and purposes. You would tell me if she weren't okay, right?"

"Yeah," he said. "Yeah, of course I would. She just can't breathe right and she's kinda weak and she can't really talk much without coughing. The doctor offered _me_ like Xanax or something if it would help me relax 'cause I told him she just… she's just not quite normal, you know? But he promised she would be, it would just take time."

"Maybe I should come help you for a little while," she suggested. He immediately wanted to protest, but it was like he couldn't bring himself to do it because that actually sounded really, really good. "I mean, you got that caretaking thing from somewhere and our passports just came this morning."

"That…um. That would actually be amazing, mom," he agreed. He leaned back against the stove again for a second before he actually pressed his back against the warm pot and jerked forward again; his t-shirt was not thick enough and now he remembered why he hadn't been standing like that to begin with. The last thing they really needed was for Rachel to escape an office fire without burns and then for him to burn himself cooking her dinner.

"Okay, sweetheart. I'll look into tickets and let you know when I can get there."

The doorbell chirped and he swore like it was a gut reaction. His mom laughed. "Okay, mom. Shit, I hope that didn't wake her up," he breathed, moving fast toward the door. He'd made sure the bedroom door at the end of the apartment was tightly closed but he wasn't sure a doorbell couldn't penetrate or whatever. The door wasn't soundproof.

Carole just laughed. "Go answer the door and cook your wife dinner and I'll call you soon, Finn. I love you."

He was just pulling the door open as she spoke. "Yeah, okay. I love you, too. Bye." He hung up and realized he was face-to-face with Rachel's boss. "Hello, Mr. Jones."

"Please, after all this, I think you could quite rightly call me Matt. May I have just a moment of your time, and perhaps Rachel's as well?" Finn just nodded and stepped aside so he could get through and somehow, in their tiny apartment, Matt Jones didn't seem quite so intimidating or even snotty.

It wasn't until Matt turned that Finn noticed he had a small, open box in his hands. "They've already demolished the building, but allowed us to go through the building on a bit of a salvage mission beforehand. The other members of our group were able to join me, but I believe these items are Rachel's. Is she home?"

Finn nodded. "Yeah, she is, but she's finally asleep."

"Oh," Matt said and nodded. "I suppose that's a good thing, then." He pushed the box toward Finn and Finn took it awkwardly. "I took the liberty of writing a letter to her, which is also inside," he tipped his head toward the box. "I was disallowed from coming to visit her during her stay in the hospital, but I'm terribly sorry for what she's dealing with. I… I've no idea why the stairwell I went out was passable and the one she chose was not. Perhaps I should've stuck with her more closely, but…"

Finn just shrugged and rolled his eyes a little, feeling the weight of the box shifting up and down with his awkward dismissal. "She told me it was basically chaos in that building. Plus, you can't change what's done and she's gonna be fine, so…I'm sure she won't even accept your apology." His mouth tipped into a half smile. "She's actually, as far as I know, kind of anxious to get back to work. She said something about getting down what she remembers as soon as possible."

Matt nodded. "Well…best not to rush it. I'm not sure if she yet knows or not, but she will continue to be paid in full the entire time she's recuperating. My production company is also covering her medical expenses."

"Are you…" he raised his eyebrows. "Are you serious?"

Matt cracked a little bit of a smile, and if Finn were being honest, he was surprised the stern man's face didn't, like _actually_ crack. "Quite. We want her focused solely on feeling better. There is some legal action against the arsonists in question as well that may recoup some of the funds, but…" Matt shrugged. "I won't trouble you with the details. I'm sure you've got your hands full already."

"Maybe a little," Finn admitted, his grin spreading as he ducked his head. He could see inside the box he was holding and yeah, basically none of this junk was gonna be much good. He could already kind of smell the dry, smoky scent from all of it. It was actually a little gross and he hoped even the smell wouldn't somehow hurt her because he was _sure_ she'd go through the items in detail as soon as she knew there was even a box. "She's a little…um… stubborn."

"And it appears _you_ are a little diplomatic," Matt countered. "Regardless, I'll leave you to it, but please have her phone me when she's up to doing so. There is no pressure for her to return to work whatsoever, but she is very welcome and we will be anxiously awaiting it."

Finn nodded. "Okay. Yeah, I mean I'll have her call you."

"Thank you, Mr. Hudson."

"Finn."

"Ah, okay then. Thank you, Finn."

The apartment was small and, despite being inside, they were really just a few steps from the door. Finn walked him out, still holding the box. There was nothing in there that couldn't wait for another time. Because, now that he was back with her, there was no more hurry. They really had all the time in the world and he was actually pretty sure that, come tomorrow or the next day or maybe next week – everything would be fine.


End file.
